fighting jet lag via blogging

My apologies if this blog post is incoherent – my body think’s I’ve just stayed up all night and is yelling at me – but it’s all to be expected when you do a 12 hour time-zone shift. I am posting this from the _future_ (queue spooky music).

It’s 8:20 pm and I figure if I can stay up for another 40 minutes I  might just sleep through the night. My recipe for fighting jet-lag includes:

• Forcing myself to sleep as much as possible near the end of my flight (required chemical assistance, and even so all I managed was 6 hours of fitful sleep, waking up at 4:30am bangkok time).
• No napping!
• As much time outdoors as possible to convince my body that yes, the sun really is up and I should be awake.

For the most part I think it’s working, it’ll be a few days before I’m properly in this timezone but at least I’m generally awake during the right hours.

Diving

I won’t be blogging again until Tuesday I think, I leave tomorrow for a 3 day, 3 night liveaboard dive trip. I’ve got this neat camera that can shoot underwater, so hopefully I’ll get some good video to post (though given the quality of the internet connections here it’ll have to be ultra low quality for now). We’ll be doing 10 dives in 3 days, in some of the worlds best diving areas, I’ll post more details when I’m back (and hopefully less tired and brain-dead).

Oh yeah, the flight

I feel like I should say something about the 18 hour business class flight from LAX to BKK – but there really isn’t much to say. For the most part the best thing about business class is that there’s nothing to say about it, it’s nice enough to forget you’re on a plane and just concentrate on sleeping or watching a movie or something. The food is better, but it’s still airplane food and I wouldn’t go to a restaurant serving it, but it’s good enough.

The one bit to note is that on my flight from Bangkok to Phuket I ended up getting upgraded into a first class seat – it’s only an hour long flight so it’s not much to get excited about – but it was very nice… here’s a pic of what the first class seating is like.

Ok – I’m going to pass out now.

YYZ to LAX

I knew, deep down, that this would happen when I booked my “oh my god I’ve been saving aeroplan points for years for this” trip to leave in early February. Late last week I started checking the weather reports obsessively, and my sense of disaster increased day by day. Forecasts started calling for “light snow”, then the next day it was “5 cm snow”, but this is Canada right, we can handle 5cm?

Stupid “Blizzard”

At the very least my obsessive weather checking meant that I knew as soon as my flight out of Toronto was cancelled, and called into aeroplan early enough to get them to put me on the flight leaving a day earlier. So a mad dash of getting everything done last minute later, some drama with an annoying US Customs agent, and one economy segment later, and I’m safe and sound in LA and killing an unexpected extra day in LA.

Decided to go with the cheapest/easiest way and just too the tourist bus to Manhattan Beach, which was pretty quiet. I did have a delicious breakfast burrito though.

Mini Breakfast Review

Ocean View Cafe – Manhattan Beach, California

Cristobal Bacon Burrito – $4.99

On it’s own the burrito was ok, good ingredients but obviously spiced for white people. Once I went a bit crazy with the bottle of Tapatio hot sauce it was delicious. IMHO you simply cannot have a burrito without some heat.

Another awesome thing – I forgot how delicious fresh tomato is, I always do in the winter. It was such a treat to have tomato that tasted half decent inside the burrito.

The hash browns were meh, but the service was excellent with a very personable waiter who I sat and chatted with for a little bit.

Now I’m sitting in LAX, waiting for the Thai Airways counter to open so I can check in for my next flight – 18 hours from LAX to Bangkok. Next update should be from Thailand!

Hark – a post!

More than a full year since my last post! Here’s what I’ve been up to over the past year.

Trip to Mexico

No blogging from that trip but here’s Pipes’ post about our trip – she’s better with words than me for sure. I haven’t even managed to publish my photos from the trip yet! [edit – ok, published now]

Work, work, and more work

Over the past year I have continued to work on a pet project that has been too successful. Great in that something I set out make happen (despite significant organizational trepidation) has become a real thing, terrible in that we’re now in the bind of having to support it without any of the organizational supports that come with a normal project in my organization. Oh well, still I can’t complain, I’ve got a great boss and am basically encouraged to find new and interesting ways to improve (read shake up) the bureaucracy.

My brother joined the Canadian Forces!

That’s right, the same dude who used to cause so much trouble back in the old neighbourhood is now responsible for our national security – Jokes, he’s totally responsible 😉

Anyways, he finished his basic in late 2009, went on to train as a Aerospace Control Operator in Cornwall, and is now stationed in North Bay doing things he’s not allowed to talk about. I find it a bit crazy that my brother has an honest to goodness security clearance.

Boston (PAX East)

Another trip, another opportunity to blog missed! To be honest, as much as I love hanging out with my tribe of geeky video game nerds, I just wasn’t into it this time. It could have been because it was my third PAX (and I had just gone to PAX prime in Seattle in September 09), or it could have just been that I liked Boston so much I was more interested in exploring than in staying inside and playing games, regardless I had a great time. I met the marvelous H.A. Conrad and Bill Wadman (photographer extraordinaire [srsly – check out some of his work] and all around great guy) and bumbled around Boston for a good long weekend of fun.

Bought a condo

Yes I have had well over 30 different “permanent” addresses in my 30-something years on earth, so I figure the only way to slow that trend down was to kick it up to the next level and buy a piece of (theoretical) property. Pipes and I co-purchased a lovely 2 Bedroom condo in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood of Toronto and it’s absolutely grand.

Renovated a condo

Dang – it’s grand now, but it was a bit of a mess when we bought it. One full kitchen and bathroom reno, not to mention tons of painting, moving in, and furniture assembly (damn you IKEA) later, and we’re super happy with the results. For time scale, we closed in April 2010, moved in July ’10, and were finally “settled” by September/October ’10. Lots of hard work but totally worth it.

Family reunion

I don’t talk too much about my family, because my immediate family is a rather small group, but heck I have a huge extended family that I basically don’t know at all. So at the end of July ’10 I decided to take my mom up on an offer to visit a family reunion with a seriously Quebecois branch of the clan. It was a blast, however I was almost forced into getting a Bloc Quebecois membership card by a member of my extended family. Thankfully I made it out in one piece with my Canadian Federalist leanings intact.

Croatia

Does it show I like to travel? Originally planned as a solo trip for me to go dive the Mediterranean, Pipes’ decided that Croatia looked cool so it happily morphed into a trip for both of us. Yes another opportunity to blog missed, but at least I uploaded the photos.

Christmas in Saranac Lake

And finally, we capped off the year visiting my mom in beautiful Saranac Lake, NY. Anyone who followed the Diner Dash will remember the place, no real wealth of photos this time, just a good visit.

Phew – a year worth of updates in a single post… perhaps this year I’ll manage more regular posting to this blog? We’ll see…. (well, there is this trip to Thailand coming up, maybe I’ll post from the road).

d_c

prorogation and participation

i’ve been keeping my eye on the prorogation kerfuffle, in particular the discussion happening in blog posts by people like remarkk and the members of the extended changecamp community, trying to get my mind around this “moment” as Mark likes to call it, and i’m left with a vague unease.

of course i’m uneasy over what’s happening in ottawa, we have a minority prime minister actively subverting the democratic institution with seemingly great effect. it may sound like hyperbole to say that having government answerable to parliament (no matter how screeching and ineffectual the house may and often be) is one of the fundamental principles of democracy in canada, but it’s bloody true. yes we have other pillars holding up our system here in Canada*, but i can’t help but feel that this prorogation is just the latest sign of a system crumbling under it’s weight. AB, a commenter on remarkks post decrying complacency, would disagree (as would others) but just because something is technically legal doesn’t make it right or good for democracy or society.

we’re really lucky in canada, so lucky that most people don’t bother to become involved in politics at all. i don’t really blame them. unlike Mark, i’m not particularly angry at people who don’t bother to vote (although i do try to convince them to do so, even if only to spoil their ballot), politics is a game with weird rules filled with unlikeable players who often make terrible decisions while acting like spoiled children who won’t share their toys. i wouldn’t care either, if i wasn’t obsessed with trying to figure out why our world is so eff’d up and looking for ways to make it better.

Mark has made a call for people to get up, do something. connect with their communities, and somehow, we’ll forge a new world and come up with “something better”. i believe this is possible, but i worry. we may come up with “something just as bad” or “something worse”. in an effort to both act on his call and satisfy my own worries, i think it’s important for us to talk concretely about what it is we’re doing. what is this new present we’re trying to make?

i don’t know what it is, but i think i can try to describe some of it’s attributes.

• it’s definitely more connected. individuals matter more but some individuals matter more than others. we can talk about how the internet allows for anyone to hop on their digital soapbox but the fact remains that building a strong network you can influence is work. if you have the time and resources to do that work good for you, but recognize that there are lots of people who don’t (or don’t want to) and who are only perhiperally connected. these people still matter.
• it’s definitely global. sure in canada we’ve got a prime minister who has gone prorogue, but democracy is under threat everywhere. it’s not a question of having good versus bad people in power, democracy pretty much guarantees that we’ll always (at some different points in time) have stupid/mean/corrupt/evil people in power at some point or other, the problem is that our democratic processes aren’t resilient enough in our new global/technical/connected context when the inevitable dumbass comes around.
• it’s definitely more equal (for some). among my group of friends, and my wider network of connected individuals it doesn’t really matter if you’re black, white, aboriginal, asian, indian, gay, bi, straight, baptist, atheist, or muslim. yes we all bring our own point of view, but your cultural identity doesn’t exclude you. that said, you’re not excluded by virtue of race, religion or sexual orientation, but there aren’t really very many people in the wider networked group i’m observing who aren’t university educated or working in a professional capacity.

i think that the change we’re (and i say we, but i can only of course speak for myself) all actively participating in has those attributes. it’s still too vague for my liking though, and i don’t agree that simply re-establishing community is enough. we need to change institutions and the rules of democracy to update them for our new context. we need to get into the difficult details. i think we need to stop fiddling with the symptoms, and start thinking about tackling the very real, and very tough problems with foundational code underlying our society. in canada that means the constitution, but what we’re going through is (i think, hunch really, but i trust my hunches and maybe one day i’ll try to write out a justification for it) symptomatic of a wider global difficulty with trying to come up with a governance system that fits the new reality.

*namely an independent judicary enforcing a strong set of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, a fundamental lack of corruption amongst our public bureaucracies (this is not to say our bureaucracy isn’t without it’s faults, but i have yet to be asked for a bribe by any public official. try getting through a routine traffic stop in many parts of the world without paying i a bribe) and a democratic process (read: elections) that is generally not open to cheating