car

So, I am moving to the new place tomorrow, so I was thinking of moving somethings with the car tonight. I go to where I parked my car and don't find it. First panic, then strangely, a thought of relief crosses my mind and I am already making plans for zip-car. I am thinking at worse it has been stolen and I won't do anything about it and at best it has been towed, in which case I won't do anything either; the city can keep the car. I don't want my life to be dictated be a car.

But either way, loss is not a very pleasant feeling - the idea that you didn't give it away, but it was actually taken away from you and it wasn't on your clock.

So I call the city towing, and what do I hear? There was road construction and so they actually moved my car to a different street. No other city that I lived in did that for me - if there was going to be construction there would be signs, often within 24 hrs, and if you are not moved, you are towed to the city towing lot at your expense. Either Vancouver is super nice, or they got slapped with a huge liability case - I am going to go with the former.

So the next day I go to find my car. And it turned out that they actually moved my car to a no parking zone and then slapped a parking ticket on it - still better than being towed. Also it was a case that when you expect worse, and are faced with just bad, that bad doesn't seem so bad anymore. Relieved I was.

When I got in the car and started it, the feel the smell... I thought, what was I thinking when I was being relieved and thinking of going car-less? I love my car - yep this cosmetically damaged old car... I still don't want my life to be dictated by a car... but *a* car is different from *my* car.

iPad

iPads are soon becoming granny toys - with its inability to multitask (did they fix that in 2?) and clunkyness, and also its marketability as a reader, it is catching up with grandma's like crazy - I am seeing quite a few of them using them in buses. It is now one of those things that owning it makes you cool if you are a grandma, but not so cool, if you are any where below the age of 70! I do remember being all excited when it first came out, just like I was all excited to receive my 'voici votre ipod touch' e-mail and what not, but this interest quickly died away for the iPad. I must admit the Touch is still cool, well, not as cool as the Android smart phones... :D

Assembling a 47" Television

... and its stand... One of the few things we did together, without me being freaked, bored or perplexed...

I haven't had a tv in a house that I lived in, since I left my parents' place... and then I have this huuuuuge one now... (not mine though)....

The Latte Limo

seen while apartment hunting in Kitsilano, the hippy bastion of Vancouver...

Today when I got in the bus, it was pretty crowded, with all those people standing, there was just one seat, next to a pretty normal looking guy with a bike helmet. When you see an empty seat like that, with no obvious water or anything, you just sit, right? Well don't, next time... So I have a list of addresses written on my notebook, addresses of apartments I am going to check out. And I am pensive, but not thinking of anything in particular. The bike helmet guy next to me goes like "so how are you going to be when you get there?" and I am like huh? (cos also, I heard he asked "so how are you going to pee when you get there?"). He repeated the question, still I am thinking "pee", but since I am not the girl to shy away and encourage that sort, I said "just as I always do". And he goes "well how *is* that?" and this point I ask him "I'm sorry I don't think I understood the question". When he repeats this time and adds "you know are you going to be happy, are you going to be content..." I understand, but it is even more confusing than "pee". So I am like "I don't know" and he's like "you know you have the choice to be whatever *you* want" and I am like "ok".... and I laugh. He quips "you think it's funny", I say "yeah" he says "well yeah I am a funny guy" and it was not sarcastic or anything. Moments of silence follow, he says "you still haven't answered my question.... you know it's a simple question"... and adds condescendingly "but most people can't answer this question"!!!!

oh hippies...

I had to get off the bus as I was at my stop... I wish I had been on the bus longer... and contrary to what I said before, I would again sit next to him... He was interesting, like all crazy people are...

I must also mention this one apartment that I wrote to, from an ad on craigslist (craigslist is the way to find apartments in Vancouver... actually probably in Montréal too; I found mine on Kijiji, the French equivalent of craigslist). So the apartment manager writes back, 'Namaste...'. That is the biggest problem with some people... they read my name and immediately assume I am from some place, and god forbid they be wrong, so they pucker up and kiss my ass, and it totally misfires! I went to see it anyway, since it was the only character house at that time. When I meet him, he showers me with 'in-India' stories, like we like to keep our apartment warm, like in India, food in India and what not... after sometime I say "well I wouldn't know" to which he says "oh you were born and raised here?" to which I say "I was born and raised in Sri Lanka" and he goes, "oh India, Sri Lanka - same thing, no?" !!!!! And that is the second biggest problem with those people, even when they are oh-so-wrong, they think they were right anyways!

Diffractions and Meditation

knock knock... "I want to humbly share something with you"

he uses the word 'humbly' a lot...

"ok, what is it?"

A long story about visions of archangel Micheal and neutrinos and how to get the energy of the neutrinos and what not...

"come here babe... I want to show you something"

so he sits me down and sits in front of me cross legged on the floor, puts on some meditative cd. I am like, ok, why not - meditating can not be bad, right? So I am (like a little puppy) all straightened back, hands on my thighs, eyes closed, listening to this cd right - all ready to meditate - 2 minutes in to the thing he's done and he's like "see what I mean?" and I am sitting there thinking "what kind of a hippy are you -you can not even meditate for 3 minutes straight and I am supposed to be this crazy ga-ga physicist girl and I have more meditative power than you..."...

He takes out this cd and holds it to the light, and says "see that light? what color do you see?". My optics lessons kick in, and I am thinking of the wonders of diffraction gratings (all those diffraction experiments really blew me away when I first learned them, and still do in fact). And he's moving his head from side to side and saying "ah man... look at those colors change - there's energy in this cd man... did you see that?"...

He jumps up and sits next to me, saying "imagine... imagine I am your colleague... I am Einstein and you... you are fucking (my name)"... I am like "whoa... how the fuck did that ever happen - how did I get stuck with fucking (my name) and you get to be Einstein?"... but I don't say this... (to clarify, he doesn't use the 'fucking' word in disparage... it is, as it is in the US, just a figure of speech).

"I am gong to say to this cd, good things and then mean things... no wait... I am not even going there... I am only going to say good things". And then for the next couple of minutes, this grown man is sitting there, with this cd in his hand, talking to the cd "you are beautiful.... I love you... I think we are going to be together for a long time... I feel this is going well"... At the end he says , "well the shape didn't really change, but I think the colors changed... did you see that?". "No" I say, "but it must because I am not gifted"...

He talks about some guy who wrote some books about this voodoo science... "this man wrote about these extra dimensions... they say this in physics too now right?". Right I think, but string theorists are just as crazy as you... "And when I was a kid, I figured these all out... but I am not stupid man... I won't go into some extra dimensions that I have no idea about... I don't want to get all messed up man... you with me?"..."was with you until the part about you not getting messed up" I think. "See... also he wrote about aliens and he has come into contact with 2 aliens... but he wrote about these in 1972... long time ago, before we ever met aliens... and now what... we have found aliens, we communicate with them, sometimes we have problems communicating with them... and then we go through these wormholes and all that shit happens... and he wrote about all that in 1972".... Huh?????


He said a couple times, "I have been sitting here tripping" and I was this close to asking him what exactly he meant by 'trip'. It is not pot, I don't smell it... whatever he is on, I would like to try though...

Feminism and Carpetting

So we got new carpets today... It was this cutest Hungarian couple, probably late 40's or so (soooo old, I know ;) ). They had this amazing dynamic - I would have thrown up if I had to work with my significant other like that - imagine being with the same person, and this ain't an office, so being with just this one person only, 24/7!!! But they were pretty cool... and the woman, was there on her knees, pounding them nails away, ripping the carpets and installing them. It might have been even that she did more than the guy. It was such a reflection of what I think of the former Soviet Union (I know Hungary was not in the former Soviet Union), China and such communist countries - my brother commented on this too when we were in China - equal opportunity to all women - no big fuss, no big revolution, no branding eachother, no burning bras, but yes, they are feminists, maybe even more so than the revolution type...

I was spellbound by the way she merged carpet ends seamlessly, like in this pic - see the left side is not merged, it shows the two edges of the carpet, and the right side is merged... whoa... and it is always fun to see all the gizmos these people use, to straighten carpets, to glue them in and what not...

And the guy - he spoke with a Eastern European accent, and he challenged me to chess (as the stereotype goes, for that part of the world - the chess I mean, not the challenging), and when I told him we didn't have a chess board, he was like let's play it in our heads, ok pawn from D2 to D4...!!! I played him like 3 moves and then gave up... I could not keep up with the map - I am really a visual person.

Seamless assimilation

and I don't mean assimilation in a bad, Borg-like way...

There are quite a few Indian (as in from the sub-continent, most of the time I can not tell the difference between us all) bus drivers in Vancouver, which is actually kind of nice - it sort of breaks the stereotype: all Indians must be engineers and doctors... And ultimately I think this is the final barrier to racism: there is an equal proportion of every ethnic group in every profession...

Beach...

seems to wash away all my sorrows, everytime I visit... I am, after all, an Island girl...

Celtic Fest

not nearly as joie de vivre as it would have been in Montréal, but hey....

Mongolian BBQ

yum yum... on Denman at Robson... it was all you can eat for like $10, but really good... and you get to chose your ingredients, so you can actually make it healthy too...

Creepy Landlords

So, I am still in the mood of "check out some Vancouver hoods with apartment shares", so am writing to a lot of those. This one ad said 'homestay' - they would even cook for you if you want - sounded like an old couple, so I went.

It was a 50's man... and a creepy man at that... He talked slowly and very enunciated... and when he took me to show my room, there was already a guy, 18-ish East Asian guy. And then the landlord spoke to both of us, in slow and well paused sentences, like we were retards or something; like you would say "good dog". I guess it makes sense in retrospect that he spoke like that if he is used to talking to a lot of people whose first language is not English.

Anyway, later as he was showing me around the house he asks me if my name means anything in my language, like maybe a beautiful flower perhaps? I am like '...'. "Because you smell really good" he adds and I squirm my face, in part disgust, part that's-a-weird-thing-to-say way. "Must be your shampoo or something". Now, by this time I am thinking, "I am not staying with Hannibal Lecter", because his frame in part resembled him, but also because it reminded me of the scene when Lecter sniffs out Clarice... But because I suck at suddenly changing my tone with strangers, I keep talking as I was before. When I leave, he refers to this: "what energy you brought in here, it is so great! thank you very much for coming!"

Today would be the day I decide, enough apartment sharing, I should probably get my own place, since this month in Japan is also probably not happening...

Mother Earth and Quartz Crystals

today when I woke up at 5:30am(!!!) for my video meeting my roommate was up.

So I am like "well you are up early?"

and he's like "I am actually up late"
and then proceeds "come here babe... I want to show you what I was doing" and takes me to the living room. There he had arranged 3 large quartz crystals in a triangle and had some tulip petals scattered around...

and he said to me, "see this babe...? this is what the universe is about... that particle you are trying to harness? you can harness it with this right here... me and my buddies are gonna show you how to do that - just by concentrating our minds... and it is better than what you do... don't mess with mother earth man"

and I am standing there thinking, man the time is ticking, for my conference call to mess with mother earth... gotta go man... peace man...

I must admit, this is by far the craziest I have shared more than a bus ride with...

first sushi

yeah, I know, it's a bit late to have sushi in Vancouver for the 3rd week anniversary, but hey, better late than never...

so fresh eel, yum yum... also had BBQ'd eel nigiri... at Aoki sushi on Broadway at Cypress

Laundromat time

another gloomy day in Vancouver... spent it doing laundry, in a laundromat - I haven't been to one in like 10yrs. It's been also 10yrs since I actually sat in front of a front-;oad dryer and watched it in action... mesmerizing, therapeutic even... (too much hippy time?)

O Canada!

This multi-flag picture from close to the Stanley Park entrance, by the coast... In case one flag does not make any intruder realize that this is Canada, here are like 20... Nationalism!!!! Ok, I'll stop...

The second pic is quite amusing actually - look at these cars actually parked on the pavement - that's where they are supposed to park, they have those parking meters even further in to the pavement (see them?). The pavements are quite wide, so pedestrians can also walk... This downtown proper, Vancouver...

Today I went for dim-sum in the suburbs with co-workers(suburbs!!!! I know, but turns out some authentic Hong Kong people went everywhere in Vancouver proper and then this was the correct dim-sum place they found - it was the parents-in-law of one of the professors I think). Suburbs, they make me feel soooo empty and desolate - you know when you are not happy, but you are not angry either, and you certainly cannot cry - it is, out of all the feelings I have, my most feared feeling... The dim-sum however, was very good... On our way back in the public transit, this young professor, his wife and I were talking - she asked 'so have you had the chance to explore Vancouver a bit?' 'yeah a bit... do you have any must-see recommendations for me?'...'errr... we are probably not the right people to ask this question - we don't really like it here'... whoa... and yesterday I had decided I like Vancouver... These people lived in NYC before this, so now I am quickly connecting the dots and am thinking, Montréal is like NYC, so what are the odds that I will like it here? And just like that, I don't like Vancouver anymore... I was reflecting on how easy it is for people to just influence me with a snap of fingers... actually it is not that - I, like most adults, have pre-formed ideas. Now if someone comes along and condones/encourages this idea, you are sold... I can not count on my hands how many people told me that I will love Vancouver - well in my case that doesn't help either - because apparently I am a contrarian...

Anyway, I ain't no quitter... I am staying here for 2years for sure... It'll be nice to at least marginally like this place in that time... :)

beer, future and social responsibilities...

Ah.... you can have all the beer you want with anyone else, but there's nothing like having a beer (or 5) with your co-workers. After all, you spend most of your woken life at work... ah Vancouver, I am finally home, I think...

Today, also for the first time in Vancouver someone commented on my laugh. We have a white board and those old-school strong smell (I hope they are old school, I hope they make less chemically disturbing ordor pens these days) marker pens, the proverbial 'stoner pens'. My office mate and I were talking about beer of Vancouver, which inevitably calls for some mockery (Vancouver beer is certainly worse than Montréal beer and apparently worse than Colorado beer too) which made me laugh a bit. This professor walks in and says, 'say what you want about the markers, but she's always laughing...' And then when we were at the pub, Wolf and Hound, somebody said exasperatedly, "I don't want to go and rebuild the detector" which started this whole conversation of how they were in Japan, building it and how they were counting days to come back, suddenly this professor turns to me and says "oh, it is not that bad, just take some white-board pens"!!

So last night's earthquake in Japan, might have messed our detectors, we won't know until Monday. On the one hand it might be a good opportunity for me to see the inside works of the detector, specially the TPC's (which I have long range interest in) and get my hands on some electronics finally. But I must admit, I wasn't completely free of the thought that went, "omg, what have I done? I left my friends, a cool city, a working experiment, my own warm condo and came for this???". But like my mom always says, "everything happens for a reason" - well I am not sure about the "every" part, but this thing can have some serious learning experiences for me... So if the experiment is not broken, we'll publish this amazing delta_theta_12 and what not - but so what? How is this any different from what I have done before - it will be really nice for me to build a detector...

This night again, I sat through my landlord's incoherence. Knowing now that he must be on crack, I watched my words very carefully, trying not to throw him off the edge. It was hard though, specially when he said things like, after listening carefully to my description of neutrinos and my experiment, "so you are making this neutrino beam right? do you think this neutrino beam caused the earthquake?" and I really had to hold my right hand back from jumping up and slapping him across the face... but for those who know me, you know it was even harder for me to hold my sharp, mean words back. Calmly (as I can), I explained to him, how scientists are under heavy scrutiny all the time, how we can not even blink without filing a 25 page report and how in wall street, people just write up a 3 page report and get billions of dollars, and we should all be worried sick about these people. To which he responded by twisting all this information, like only hippies can, to conclude, wall street caused this earthquake. I shamelessly championed this idea - as long as we have the hippies off our backs... hee hee... wonder what my economist brother will have to say about my cleverness...

But this night, I truly grappled with the question, is he on crack, is he mentally sick or is he just misinformed? Because if it's either of the former, I should shut up - it is my social responsibility to, in the very least, not provoke his condition, but if it's the last, I need to stand up for my people and inform him, as best as I could about the truth, right? On the one hand my motherly instincts say 'well this is mental illness, it is not all pretty like in the movies, it is ugly and bitter and provoking... are you gonna walk out on this fellow human being just like that?". On the other hand it baffles my logical mind, everything I ever learned, my greatest passion in life, is blamed for everything, including this earthquake, and my pride suffers, my responsibility to my people, the people who made me, the people who are my friends beckons. He had taped some tsunami footage. He replayed them, he said he wanted to show me something. He pauses at a clip when the waves are rushing much into the inlands, with houses, vehicles and all sorts of debris, he points to a black blurb (yeah pick any of the 100's of black blurbs in that clip) and said "look at that, look at that... what *is* that?? That is some force of some sorts, some thing that shouldn't be there" as if though it was some invisible god-like manifestation. Oh, before, when I explained to him how neutrinos, of 3 flavours, are in fact a combination of 3 other mass states (sorry, I almost never say this part to the general public, but he asked me too many questions about oscillations), he said "that's so cool man... I mean think of these little 3 things combining to make 3 other things and then changing from time to time... you see so you are trying to decipher this right? harness this energy of the neutrino right? (No! I thought, but whatever) Don't do that... Don't mess with mother earth man... see... breathe in with me... look in my eyes here... "(so I breathe in and look in his eyes, ain't I a nice little puppy?, but of course this all has no effect on me cos my head has only 3 choices, you are on crack, you are sick or you are ignorant)... then he pauses for 30 seconds in awe and says 'oh man I see it... I see the energy in you... I think you have a gift'.

I am usually pretty good at not showing my boredom, I mean let's face it, 95% of the time people tell boring mundane stories, right... Talk me some music, talk me some politics, talk me some culture, talk me some physics, talk me some serious philosophy... just don't bore me with other crap... but I am usually pretty good, I can feign interest... but this hippy crap, I was really loosing it, I really couldn't keep my yawns from manifesting... After much debating in my head, I said "I am really sleepy, it must be the beer... I have to go to sleep." Ah... the burdens of social responsibility - sometimes I wish I was autistic (yeah, more than what I am) - society would have cut me all the slack for telling them what was really on my mind....

HSBC Vancouver

HSBC Vancouver is pretty pimps, complete with baby grand piano and all (see that?) and the customer service is exceptional... Montréal HSBC really sucks big time... Now before everyone gets on Montréal's case, it was just the HSBC there... for example the Desjardins credit union had exceptional service, including free notary service, and I was really impressed at how many things they allowed you to do online... which is still not what can be said about HSBC's online banking, but hey... the branch was still quite nice and full of pleasant people... (compare that to my peeved eve accounts manager in Montréal - btw, why do I need an accounts manager? I just wanted to open a checking account!!)

Tajine

Williams Sonoma is selling this fancy schmancy tajine... Reminded me of one of my friends, whose mom proudly talked about this tajine that she got all the way from la Françe - it is one of the best ones she said, a cast iron one... I really had to fight myself from reminding her that a tajine is in fact a Tunisian or Moroccan dish/vessel and not a French one and that it should be made of clay, to impart the proper taste!! When I actually saw her tajine, it was in fact much worse than I had imagined... Kind of like this one... I bet this Williams Sonoma tajine also sells for $100-200 at least.If you buy a real tajine from a real Moroccan shop for $25, how can you show off to poor postdocs though, right?

Fifth Avenue Cinemas

Fifth Avenue Cinemas - look at that external ticket booth - but they just maintain that - they have those ticket machines inside... Not as quaint and cozy as Cinéma Beubien, but quite nice actually...

Biutiful was good, but Incendies was more powerful... and coherent too... I guess I ama little tired of all the incoherent talk of my landlord last night...

Hippies Renounced!

Oh my god.... I officially renounce hippies!!! In retrospect I think the landlord was stoned... but since I didn’t smell it, I am thinking maybe he was on crack... He was also super edgy which makes me think so... but at that time I didn’t realize that so I was just sitting and listening to his hysteria, not knowing if I should get up and go... A lot of woodoo science stories, yep, about that guy who thought good thoughts and made water crystalize in beautiful patterns and the physicist who explained this phenomenon using quantum mechanics... I remember seeing this in “What the bleep do we know” and being outraged... So when I went home I looked this so called physicist up - sure he was at Stanford at some point, but he hasn’t published anything since the 1970’s, anything physics that is... Who said physicists can’t go bananas...

Am I going to Japan for this guys conference? “Hell no!” I said... I was being pretty polite, until then, but that really broke me I think...

At one point I was also told that my short-sightedness is purely a condition in my head!!!!! That we both should start practicing to go eye-glass free!!!!

Granville Island Public Market 3

The strawberry picture, with my hand placed next to the strawberries, at the same depth of field (no optical illusion here), will not be a reason I will like this market....

Granville Island Public Market 2

So then, that was the first time I felt like I liked Vancouver - previously the best I had felt is that maybe I can learn to like this place...

Granville Island Public Market 1

Went to Granville Island Public Market today, with my cynical goggles on - I mean it can not possibly be better than Marché Jean-Talon, right? Wrong, it turned out.

The island, upon entrance, reminded me of Îles-de-la-Madeleine - so obviously I was in love already. Yeah it is also touristy, but well, so is Îles-de-la-Madeleine... There was this street performer, yep, those that make me stop and gape in wonderment. He was doing one of those chain-me-and-I’ll-unchain-myself trick which is also cool, but what gets me most is their wit... And as fate had it, one of the audiences that he called upon, happened to be a Montréaler... So here I am already crying... And I walk into the market itself... whoa... I immediately noticed the fresh fish selection much much better than in Montréal, obviously, and the pasta and chacuterie almost as good as or better than ours, not so obviously... The Vancouverite who sat next to me in the plane on my way here said at some point “the food is better in Vancouver, than Montréal”, to which I gasped, “really????”, sensing I must be offended, he immediately said “well just a notch”, to which I thought “pfft..”. I am having second thoughts about the “pffft...” now... The chesee I think Montréal might win - I have mentioned before that Montréal has excellent cheese?

Stunning views of downtown, and rich yachts on False Creek (so called because it is really not a creek, but an extension of the ocean itself)... Me thinks me is sold...

Oh also they had a big sign for a fisherman’s wharf.... mmm mmmmm... I can nit wait t get my own place...

Semi trip

took a half hour ride in a 40-foot long trailer, with a dog... and a man (a Quebecois man may I add, who spoke with a non-urban Quebecois accent, which most of my Montréaler friends do not have... but since I would hear it like 25% of the time when I was there, it made for a nostalgic trip down memory lane...) Also my first half hour of French conversation in two weeks...