For anyone who reads this and blogs themselves: This is my ranting venue (largely forgotten since I have gotten into Facebook), but I would like to revive it as a showplace for my opinions and thoughts that do not fit into 120 words on Twitter or FB. This is a personal space, a creative space, a free-writing playground that isn't necessarily where I would want to direct someone to whom I was showing off my writing skills
Now, for my writings that have a higher calibre: short articles, "how-to" guides, writing samples, collections of blog posts on particular topics (technical tips & solutions, beer/wine and homebrewing), blog entries in English vs in German...where should I place those? Here, and risk a major hodge-podge of subjects and possibly being judged by a potential employer because of some political rant? A different blog for each subject/style? If I do that, how do I manage that universe of blogs. I feel like I may already have more blogs than I can handle and update regularly.
Any thoughts from the Blogosphere?
Sincerely,
Orange.
rhymes with me
Never been to Spain.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Monday, March 23, 2009
I recently bought a batch of firm-skinned, flavourless kiwis on sale at the local corner greengrocer. That part, however, was the only local thing about it. I noticed the kiwis were from Italy and though I was surprised by this, I shouldn't have been, as Italy has pulled ahead of the kiwi's namesake nation in terms of production volume: Italy with around 260,000 tonnes, accounts for 35% of the market; New Zealand, with just under 240,000 tonnes, 32%.
I'm used to getting smaller, organic kiwifruit with a lot more flavour, but they still come from abroad- I believe generally from Mexico or California which certainly means slightly less travel time, but they are still far from local, even though we do have hothouses that grow them in BC. Is it just a matter of the Italian imports being cheaper to bring in than ripe, local fruit? We pay the price in flavour, certainly, I realize again and again.
Another note on the high cost of low prices: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes?currentPage=1
I'm used to getting smaller, organic kiwifruit with a lot more flavour, but they still come from abroad- I believe generally from Mexico or California which certainly means slightly less travel time, but they are still far from local, even though we do have hothouses that grow them in BC. Is it just a matter of the Italian imports being cheaper to bring in than ripe, local fruit? We pay the price in flavour, certainly, I realize again and again.
Another note on the high cost of low prices: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes?currentPage=1
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
I'm getting a little greened-out, I think. I've made such an effort to green my workplace, my home, my travel and daily commute, produce as little trash as possible that I probably have earned some gloating rights- but that isn't what this is about. It's hard not to feel a little touch of superiority when you attend a green tips brainstorming session intended to involve people who haven't been previously involved in working on environmental issues. I wanted to be supportive, but could hardly resist rolling my eyes when I heard some of the suggestions put forth.
The other thing that struck me was the frustration people expressed with trying to raise the consciousness of others. Even simple tasks such as separating recyclables from compost, from trash apparently baffles many. Even when there are pictures above the bins that a 3 year old should have the capacity to interpret, some people either will not take the time, or do not have the capacity to understand these most basic of instructions.
Wow.
Sometimes my faith in humanity sinks below a level that is easily recovered from. Whether people's callous behaviour towards others and doing things that create a better society should be attributed to: 1. a lack of basic intelligence (we can't be THAT stupid on average), 2. a lack of time (are we really THAT busy? how can you use having the fact you are busy because you have children as an excuse for not wanting to make the world a better place?), lack of caring (why did you reproduce in that case?), or complete unwillingness to participate (can a person be that self-centred?) or whatever other possibilities exist; it frightens me to live in a world filled with people that go through life this way every day.
Here's an example. I have made the choice to cycle to work, rain or shine. Some people drive Hummers and other ridiculously offensive vehicles to work. I physically expose myself to their lack of responsibility every day. If you are one of the completely self-centred, individualistic bastards described above; how do I know you care enough about to not injure or kill me with your vehicle in your haste to get somewhere? If you are that stupid, do I really want you to have the right to operate a machine with that destructive capacity in crowded traffic, especially when I am nearby wearing only a stryofoam helmet for protection? If you are so special, that society's rules and regulations, that our "best practices" for living in a better world don't apply to you, then do I want to share the road with a sociopath like you? Do I even want to share a society with you? It might seem extreme, but if society is doomed unless we change drastically and immediately, shouldn't we be sending extremists like you to a gulag to retrain you for the new paradigm? Maybe the wrong people are being sent to Guatanamo Bay.
The other thing that struck me was the frustration people expressed with trying to raise the consciousness of others. Even simple tasks such as separating recyclables from compost, from trash apparently baffles many. Even when there are pictures above the bins that a 3 year old should have the capacity to interpret, some people either will not take the time, or do not have the capacity to understand these most basic of instructions.
Wow.
Sometimes my faith in humanity sinks below a level that is easily recovered from. Whether people's callous behaviour towards others and doing things that create a better society should be attributed to: 1. a lack of basic intelligence (we can't be THAT stupid on average), 2. a lack of time (are we really THAT busy? how can you use having the fact you are busy because you have children as an excuse for not wanting to make the world a better place?), lack of caring (why did you reproduce in that case?), or complete unwillingness to participate (can a person be that self-centred?) or whatever other possibilities exist; it frightens me to live in a world filled with people that go through life this way every day.
Here's an example. I have made the choice to cycle to work, rain or shine. Some people drive Hummers and other ridiculously offensive vehicles to work. I physically expose myself to their lack of responsibility every day. If you are one of the completely self-centred, individualistic bastards described above; how do I know you care enough about to not injure or kill me with your vehicle in your haste to get somewhere? If you are that stupid, do I really want you to have the right to operate a machine with that destructive capacity in crowded traffic, especially when I am nearby wearing only a stryofoam helmet for protection? If you are so special, that society's rules and regulations, that our "best practices" for living in a better world don't apply to you, then do I want to share the road with a sociopath like you? Do I even want to share a society with you? It might seem extreme, but if society is doomed unless we change drastically and immediately, shouldn't we be sending extremists like you to a gulag to retrain you for the new paradigm? Maybe the wrong people are being sent to Guatanamo Bay.
Friday, January 16, 2009
bread and cheese and delis, oh my
Been reading a lot about cuisine and its issues: 100 mile diet, Slow Food Movement, sustainable agriculture, urban market gardens, farmer's markets, etc. the last little while. Lisa and I have been customers of Spud.ca for almost a decade and making the choice to buy free range, organic quite often. Which has got me thinking:
I'm not going to pretend that German food is the height of gourmetry, but I was raised eating what foodies consider "whole foods": whole grain bread, meats raised without cruelty and unnessary additives, muesli, etc. I was also close to the means of production- we often bought farmer-direct and visited the places our sausages were made (Dad's friend's deli). It wasn't low fat or low salt and the veg was often overcooked, but the fact I was teased for having "weird food" in elementary school while the other kids ate Wonderbread and Wagon Wheels and othe white trash delights has made me a better and healthier person today.
I'm not going to pretend that German food is the height of gourmetry, but I was raised eating what foodies consider "whole foods": whole grain bread, meats raised without cruelty and unnessary additives, muesli, etc. I was also close to the means of production- we often bought farmer-direct and visited the places our sausages were made (Dad's friend's deli). It wasn't low fat or low salt and the veg was often overcooked, but the fact I was teased for having "weird food" in elementary school while the other kids ate Wonderbread and Wagon Wheels and othe white trash delights has made me a better and healthier person today.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
I was struck today by the fact that it has been well over a hundred years since the advent of "modern" art. Picasso's "blue period" which everyone knows from college dorm posters was around 1901. Egon Schiele's sexually charged drawings of far-too-thin-and-young models raise the same reactions now that they did then, but flip through a magazine and many ads reflect this imagery. It has seeped into our consumer culture, but as art, it still challenges us.
I see the society at large viewpoint in the statement made by one of my ex-girlfriend's fairly unadventurous and socially conservative friends, who despite being a neo-con, was quite promiscuous- another of today's strange hybrid conflicts (...and the reason that abstinence education doesn't work, but that is a different rant). We were touring the Victoria Art Gallery, which is by no means a very cutting-edge artistic experience, browsing through the collections when we got to the Robert Bateman collection, whereupon she stated loudly: "finally, something I can understand!" I gave her a chance to give me her opinions on what she liked about them. There was one piece there that juxtaposed beautiful West Coast rainforest with a loaded logging truck and made a soft political statement. It turned out to be her least favorite piece. The rest she liked, mainly because they looked like you could reach out and pet them. I admire the draftsmanship, but I tried vainly to communicate my frustration at the complete lack of any narrative.
Modern art has been with us since the end of the century before last and we still greatly fear it as a general society. Very little has changed, yet everything has changed. We cling desperately to the latest technological advancement, that latest ephemeral entertainment: movies, video games; all the while anticipating the next thing down the path. We gleefully anticipate the arrival of the next big consumer product, yet to a large degree fear those things that make us look at ourselves and what we have produced and think.
I see the society at large viewpoint in the statement made by one of my ex-girlfriend's fairly unadventurous and socially conservative friends, who despite being a neo-con, was quite promiscuous- another of today's strange hybrid conflicts (...and the reason that abstinence education doesn't work, but that is a different rant). We were touring the Victoria Art Gallery, which is by no means a very cutting-edge artistic experience, browsing through the collections when we got to the Robert Bateman collection, whereupon she stated loudly: "finally, something I can understand!" I gave her a chance to give me her opinions on what she liked about them. There was one piece there that juxtaposed beautiful West Coast rainforest with a loaded logging truck and made a soft political statement. It turned out to be her least favorite piece. The rest she liked, mainly because they looked like you could reach out and pet them. I admire the draftsmanship, but I tried vainly to communicate my frustration at the complete lack of any narrative.
Modern art has been with us since the end of the century before last and we still greatly fear it as a general society. Very little has changed, yet everything has changed. We cling desperately to the latest technological advancement, that latest ephemeral entertainment: movies, video games; all the while anticipating the next thing down the path. We gleefully anticipate the arrival of the next big consumer product, yet to a large degree fear those things that make us look at ourselves and what we have produced and think.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Surrey's new "downtown"
Today, a rant about realtor hype:
There has been a lot of hype (mostly from realtors hoping to sell units) about Surrey's new downtown core. I have yet to see this core evolve. As a former resident of Surrey, one of the characteristics that always struck me was the expanse: of parking lots, wide streets, the municipality itself and the distances you had to travel between one expanse of asphalt to the next to get anything done. I wholeheartedly blame growing up during my teen years in Surrey for instilling the "car culture" values that I had into my twenties and have worked so hard to get rid of ever since. I was 18 and thought no girl would ever date me unless I had a car, that I would never be able to find a decent job unless I could drive myself there, etc. To some extent, this was actually true- many places I worked had no decent access via transit. Up until my first car at 18 or 19, how did I cope? I walked, I cycled; I covered vast distances without a car and suffered abuse from motorists who felt I didn't belong anywhere near a road. I've never suffered as badly since, even though I am a daily cyclist in Vancouver and still see negligent acts by motorists every minute. It was just so much worse in Surrey, home of muscle car burnouts and the "you're not manly unless you have a truck" attitude. People went out of their way to mess with you. I was spat upon, cut off intentionally, had cigarettes, slurpees and other unidentifiable substances thrown at me.
Anyone I know who lives in Surrey owns a car, even non-adults. I wonder if anyone who buys the more affordable Surrey real estate considers the extra costs of operating a motor vehicle for each home occupant. If you have anything within reasonable walking distance, you are lucky.
As for the downtown core, where is it happening? Around Surrey Central station? That's a shopping mall, not a downtown. I guess you have the basics there: grocery, recreation centre, banks, convenience stores, gas stations and a few restaurants, but it is a pretty poor excuse for a downtown and is only barely made pedestrian friendly by traffic calming. There is a reasonable brew pub there, which is sorely lacking in atmosphere but is the only place around worth hanging out in, other than a smattering of ethnic restaurants. Surrounding this is a series of low-rise box stores and fast food chains, cutting right through it, a six-lane highway. It is about as much of a downtown as Highway 97/Harvey Road in Kelowna- a town that has a reasonable, organically developed downtown, even if the rest of it is a sprawling mess.
Please don't say that the future site of "downtown" is further north, in that area between 104th and 108th in the vicinity of King George Highway. That is an area so infested with junkies and crackhouses waiting to be torn down for future real estate developments that it puts the Downtown Eastside to shame. Surrey has never properly acknowledged it's drug and homelessness problems and allowed them to fester, preferring the heavy-handed law and order approach over reasonable harm reduction strategies. We now see that this method is far less effective. Learn a lesson there, Vancouver.
As far as this "downtown" is concerned, I can't see many Lululemon clad yoga hotties walking their toy dogs from their condo to the local hip independent cafe past the drug-addled wrecks shuffling along there in the middle of the day. I think Buffy is gonna drive Fluffy the hell out of there and double-lock her doors when she gets to her condo out of the secure parkade elevator. No one is going to engage the streets here without armed backup. Strike two for Downtown Surrey.
To be fair, Surrey is growing, fast. Really honkin' fast. It is filling up with high-rise condos that are selling like hotcakes, in large part to investors picking up relative bargains (by Vancouver standards) and turning around and attempting to resell them before the ground is even broken on the building site. A critical mass of people will make it easier to support small businesses and will gradually allow a wide diversity of shops and services to spring up, bringing people out on the streets more than today. The planning seems haphazard, though, residential highrises are springing up down the road from big box parking lots. Most likely, people are still going to drive everywhere as an urban village with everything within a reasonable distance can't really happen in a village with multi-acre sized parking lots. The current and planned architecture is also not conducive to this: secure gated complexes spit cars from their parking garages onto wide multi-lane roads which lead to large big box shopping centres. The surrounding residential streets have no sidewalks. Garages and driveways face the street in North American automobile suburb style, pedestrians are shunned or an afterthought.
The only place that this downtown seems to currently exist is in the minds of marketers. Population growth may cause it to grow organically over time, but without planners willing to enforce strict rules on developers, it is going to be a sprawling, faceless version of a "downtown" and not really a downtown at all.
http://www.westerninvestor.com/regional/surreyaug06.pdf
http://www.quattroliving.ca/news/Province_May08-08.pdf
There has been a lot of hype (mostly from realtors hoping to sell units) about Surrey's new downtown core. I have yet to see this core evolve. As a former resident of Surrey, one of the characteristics that always struck me was the expanse: of parking lots, wide streets, the municipality itself and the distances you had to travel between one expanse of asphalt to the next to get anything done. I wholeheartedly blame growing up during my teen years in Surrey for instilling the "car culture" values that I had into my twenties and have worked so hard to get rid of ever since. I was 18 and thought no girl would ever date me unless I had a car, that I would never be able to find a decent job unless I could drive myself there, etc. To some extent, this was actually true- many places I worked had no decent access via transit. Up until my first car at 18 or 19, how did I cope? I walked, I cycled; I covered vast distances without a car and suffered abuse from motorists who felt I didn't belong anywhere near a road. I've never suffered as badly since, even though I am a daily cyclist in Vancouver and still see negligent acts by motorists every minute. It was just so much worse in Surrey, home of muscle car burnouts and the "you're not manly unless you have a truck" attitude. People went out of their way to mess with you. I was spat upon, cut off intentionally, had cigarettes, slurpees and other unidentifiable substances thrown at me.
Anyone I know who lives in Surrey owns a car, even non-adults. I wonder if anyone who buys the more affordable Surrey real estate considers the extra costs of operating a motor vehicle for each home occupant. If you have anything within reasonable walking distance, you are lucky.
As for the downtown core, where is it happening? Around Surrey Central station? That's a shopping mall, not a downtown. I guess you have the basics there: grocery, recreation centre, banks, convenience stores, gas stations and a few restaurants, but it is a pretty poor excuse for a downtown and is only barely made pedestrian friendly by traffic calming. There is a reasonable brew pub there, which is sorely lacking in atmosphere but is the only place around worth hanging out in, other than a smattering of ethnic restaurants. Surrounding this is a series of low-rise box stores and fast food chains, cutting right through it, a six-lane highway. It is about as much of a downtown as Highway 97/Harvey Road in Kelowna- a town that has a reasonable, organically developed downtown, even if the rest of it is a sprawling mess.
Please don't say that the future site of "downtown" is further north, in that area between 104th and 108th in the vicinity of King George Highway. That is an area so infested with junkies and crackhouses waiting to be torn down for future real estate developments that it puts the Downtown Eastside to shame. Surrey has never properly acknowledged it's drug and homelessness problems and allowed them to fester, preferring the heavy-handed law and order approach over reasonable harm reduction strategies. We now see that this method is far less effective. Learn a lesson there, Vancouver.
As far as this "downtown" is concerned, I can't see many Lululemon clad yoga hotties walking their toy dogs from their condo to the local hip independent cafe past the drug-addled wrecks shuffling along there in the middle of the day. I think Buffy is gonna drive Fluffy the hell out of there and double-lock her doors when she gets to her condo out of the secure parkade elevator. No one is going to engage the streets here without armed backup. Strike two for Downtown Surrey.
To be fair, Surrey is growing, fast. Really honkin' fast. It is filling up with high-rise condos that are selling like hotcakes, in large part to investors picking up relative bargains (by Vancouver standards) and turning around and attempting to resell them before the ground is even broken on the building site. A critical mass of people will make it easier to support small businesses and will gradually allow a wide diversity of shops and services to spring up, bringing people out on the streets more than today. The planning seems haphazard, though, residential highrises are springing up down the road from big box parking lots. Most likely, people are still going to drive everywhere as an urban village with everything within a reasonable distance can't really happen in a village with multi-acre sized parking lots. The current and planned architecture is also not conducive to this: secure gated complexes spit cars from their parking garages onto wide multi-lane roads which lead to large big box shopping centres. The surrounding residential streets have no sidewalks. Garages and driveways face the street in North American automobile suburb style, pedestrians are shunned or an afterthought.
The only place that this downtown seems to currently exist is in the minds of marketers. Population growth may cause it to grow organically over time, but without planners willing to enforce strict rules on developers, it is going to be a sprawling, faceless version of a "downtown" and not really a downtown at all.
http://www.westerninvestor.com/regional/surreyaug06.pdf
http://www.quattroliving.ca/news/Province_May08-08.pdf
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Bad Blogger
I'm failing miserably at the new year's resolution to blog daily, or at least write daily. Bad blogger.
Lately:
-I have moved almost everything I own into my new house on 16th Avenue in Vancouver. No more Surrey real estate ownership. Screw that cesspit.
-I have found my current job in jeopardy.
-I have been seeking a slight career shift, with hopefully a sales and marketing component and away from the purely technical.
-My car was broken into and the thief managed to steal a couple of pens and a $1.99 tall can of Radeberger Pilsner which has been in there for 6 months. I hope it was spoiled and he gets the runs from it.
-A temporary tenant has been found for the basement for the summer and we are stepping up the renovations. Most of the painting has been accomplished, but there are a million small jobs to complete.
More details to follow.
Lately:
-I have moved almost everything I own into my new house on 16th Avenue in Vancouver. No more Surrey real estate ownership. Screw that cesspit.
-I have found my current job in jeopardy.
-I have been seeking a slight career shift, with hopefully a sales and marketing component and away from the purely technical.
-My car was broken into and the thief managed to steal a couple of pens and a $1.99 tall can of Radeberger Pilsner which has been in there for 6 months. I hope it was spoiled and he gets the runs from it.
-A temporary tenant has been found for the basement for the summer and we are stepping up the renovations. Most of the painting has been accomplished, but there are a million small jobs to complete.
More details to follow.
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