I have known about the Streams of History project for a long while now since my friend Lorraine is precisely a volunteer and educator/trainer with the project Fearless City. In recent posts, both Gillian Shaw (Vancouver Sun) and Rebecca Bollwitt (Miss604/Sixty4Media) highlighted the project, and I thought I couldn’t let this opportunity pass by and highlight this very worthy exhibit. From the FC website
It’s often said that if we ignore our history we are doomed to repeat it. By recognizing and recording the stories of up to 20 sites of historical importance in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, mobile videographers connect past to present, creating an opening for informed reflection on the future. This crossmedia exhibition and web project remixes Labour, Work, and Working People: A Working Class and A Labour History Walking Tour using Web 2.0 strategies to expand the number of voices heard and stories told.
The event starts at 10am with a pancake breakfast and the VJ remix takes place at Gallery Gachet. Check the Fearless City invite and do come, if you can. I won’t be able to attend, but I hope I’ll be able to catch some of the live streaming.
And if you attend the event and would like to write your experiences, I invite you to guest post here on my blog. You can either send me a tweet, an email or drop a comment.
I am operating on 4 hours of sleep as I had too much work to do, and I wanted to meet up with Nancy for lunch. I’ve fallen asleep on the bus on my way home and had to miss a number of appointments. The problem is, I only had a short nap because I have a splitting headache. While I know that the relationship between sleep deprivation and headaches is somewhat complex (as mentioned in this study), I do know one thing. My head feels awful. I think I’m going to take Friday off.
A couple of weeks ago, I was having dinner with a few very good friends and we started talking about Twitter. They didn’t know why it was useful. I explained that frequently, people share great finds (articles, things they are doing, things other people are doing, etc). More detail about Twitter in another post. This one is to share a couple of things that I’ve learned about applications of social media to sustainability.
I see the intersection of social media and sustainability as a part of my emerging new research, teaching and consulting agendas (by the way, have you checked my new research blog? No? Go ahead and check it out then come back). And one of the great things I’ve learned is how you can apply these social media tools to enable environmental non-governmental organizations and Crown corporations to reach out to a broader audience. Examples that a variety of awesome social media gurus have done for environmental causes and the such follow (this is a short link-love list – if you find yourself not included, feel free to drop me a comment). And the most exciting thing of them all? I heard about them on Twitter 🙂
– Dave Jones from Hill and Knowlton alerted me to the work he had been doing to help World Wildlife Fund Canada to spread the message about Earth Hour Canada. He spoke to a room of 18 people from the WWF Canada as sort of a “socmed bootcamp” and got them started on Twitter, Facebook and all that jazz. Dave is a great Canadian social media/PR person, and I offered to contribute to the Vancouver Earth Hour volunteer team.
– Darren Barefoot, Julie Szabo (Capulet Communications) and Monica Hamburg (in collaboration with Capulet) helped Forest Ethics, Greenpeace Canada and Sierra Club BC launch a social media campaign (that included Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and blogger outreach) to protect the Great Bear rainforest. I wrote about their campaign on my blog a couple of times. Excellent work here too.
– Before they merged with Third Whale, Dave Olson (mentor and good friend) helped spread the amazing work of HappyFrog.ca all over the Twitterverse. I even did some podcasting and liveblogging of EPIC ’08 as part of Dave’s FrogSquad!
– Third Whale is also on Twitter. The account is managed by relentless and ultra-enthusiastic Emily Jubenvill (who by the way is considered Canada’s greenest life-style person). I had a chance to chat with Dr. Boyd Cohen (who works in the corporate sustainability field) and is an entrepreneur. I foresee great things in the future of Third Whale.
– Social Signal (headed by Rob Cottingham and Alexandra Samuel) helped BC Hydro spread their message on energy saving tips through a variety of social media tools. Although I could very well recommend some improvements to BC Hydro’s Human Resources policy, I think the work that Rob and Alex did with them was most excellent! Obviously, that speaks to the fact that Social Signal’s work is superb.
– The recently launched site that my friend Anthony Nicalo is co-leading (FarmFed) is yet another excellent example of the convergence/intersection of social media and sustainability (in this case, sustainable farming, sustainable food policy). I have a guest post for their blog that I will email ASAP.
– Finally, and not to toot our own horn, but the Vancouver Twestival is another space where sustainability (in this case, water sustainability) and social media converge. Rebecca Bollwitt is the main focal point for Twestival and Lorraine, Keira and I are helping Rebecca in whatever we can. I predict that Twestival will be a great event, and I’m very grateful to 6S Marketing, The Opus Hotel and everyone who has donated prizes for the raffle. THANK YOU SO MUCH.
In summary – social media and sustainability can and SHOULD intersect. I am actually quite excited that my work in social media (e.g. my blogging and micro-blogging, participation in social media events, etc.) is offering some leads in regards to contract work. At this juncture in my life, even though I love research and teaching, I will for sure accept some social media contract work, but only to the extent of what my abilities can do. Remember, in regards to social media, I’m still a newbie 🙂
Anyone who knows me well knows that there are three cuisines that make me absolutely happy: Ethiopian, Indian and Mexican. Since Andy and I hadn’t hung out in a rather long while, and given that he just launched BuddyPress and we just had attended WordCamp Whistler, we figured we’d try to do lunch at a new restaurant (we’d already tried Salsa and Agave, which I think Andy did like).
Thus we decided to settle on Cafe Mumbai (seeing as we’d both be in the Kitsilano neighbourhood). It was the first visit for the two of us, so it was also very nice to try a new place. We both ordered a combo with rice, vegetables and a chicken curry (masala). The portions are rather generous (I’d insert a photo which Andy took but he hasn’t emailed it to me yet, hehehe – will do that when he does email it), and the food is really exquisite.
Service was definitely top-notch. Even though the place wasn’t really full (as we had lunch rather late, closer to 1:00pm) the owner/manager was always very attentive and trying to be very helpful. Overall, a great experience. It’s always nice to catch up with friends on a one-on-one basis. Yes, I love meetups, but… you know… I do appreciate quality time with my friends outside of the world of meetups and what-not.
I’d seriously recommend Cafe Mumbai to anyone who is in the neighbourhood and wants some really good Indian food. Overall lunch would be between $ 9-14 CND w/tax and tip, per person. Not really very, very expensive.
Yes, I confess – I’m friends with Emme Rogers – full disclosure. But I’m getting ABSOLUTELY NO SPECIAL TREATMENT. I *have* to submit a Valentine’s entry if I want to win the chocolate fondue/snowshoeing contest. It’s been SUCH a long time since I last wrote one, so being an academic, I had to dissect exactly what I know about Emme and put together a Valentine’s 🙂 But since I’ve lost practice, it will be short and perhaps not all that sweet. I’m not sure what my chances are of winning, but heck, worth a try.
Soooooo…. first off, let’s assume that it’s actually Valentine’s Day (so, not Saturday but the following Sunday). Just for purposes of the letter…
Dearest Emme,
I was walking along the streets of Gastown, and as I was doing some window-shopping, I noticed that I stared at beautiful clothes while thinking of you, longing to know when we’d hang out and talk Ubuntu, geeking out in our laptops. Yes, I admit it, Emme. I *am* a geek. A sweet, WordPress-trained geek. With a healthy dose of side skills as well. I know how to open a bottle of wine. YES! I learned to open wine bottles last year. I know – it’s like… I *should* have known how to, but oh well. I didn’t. But now I do. I even know about sustainable wines! Yes, my friend Anthony (from Farmstead Wines) distributes bio-dynamic wines, and I really love this kind of wine – I am sure you’d love it too. And yes, they are amazing. We should have a glass of a biodynamic wine when we go out chocolate-fondue-consuming 🙂
For all the reasons above, dearest Emme… since I speak WordPress, I am learning about Ubuntu and I’m all about empowering people to be and feel sexy regardless of age, race, religion … will you be my Valentine?
Love,
Raul
PS – If you decide that my use of Windows Vista is a deal-breaker, I know for a fact that many of my Mac-geek friends will be more than happy to pitch in on my DreamBanks dream of getting a new MacBook Pro. If need be, I’ll borrow a MacBook for our chocolate fondue date. Deal? 🙂
Hat tips to Mark Romic who sent me a link to this CBC story on Twitter (a few other tweeps might have too, so I apologize if I didn’t hat tip you – let me know). As many of you may or may not know, I’m on the job market. Yes, I do still consult and teach and do research and so on, but I’m searching for a full- time position.
Ideally, with my qualifications, the number of languages I speak fluently, my international experience, my industry work, CV and my publication and teaching record, universities should be fighting amongst themselves to hire me (sorry, but modesty doesn’t become me in this case. I can prove what I’ve accomplished and what I am capable of). After all, I did a PhD because I like research AND teaching. The job market (even the academic job market) is tough right now, so no, those universities aren’t fighting to hire me (YET).
Sadly, because of the current economic situation, it appears as though some people suggest that we “dumb down” our resumes (as noted in this CBC story. Frankly, I refuse to do so. I can do work that has absolutely no relationship with my PhD. Of course I can! I have done it before. Heck, I still get asked to do stuff outside of what my research, teaching and consulting interests are (but always stuff I’ve either previously done or I’m competent at doing).
So, does the CBC article imply that I should give up all the years of education I have and all the contributions I have done to the literature, and to advancing the collective understanding of how environmental NGOs behave or what are the best models for wastewater governance, all in favor of getting-whatever-job-I-can-get? I’m not a fan of credentialism, I’m a fan of competence. And if in searching a job it is suggested that I “dumb down” my resume, then the job is probably not a good fit for me anyways.
I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on this. And no, this is not a rant. I am quite willing to search for the perfect job if need be, despite the current economic situation, and despite my current tight budget.
One of my good friend’s sent me an email asking me whether I could pass this information. She is hoping to find people to take advantage of this opportunity. I’m literally copying and pasting her email here, but if you want more information, email me and I’ll connect you.
My friend’s parents have a 2BR condo up at Whistler that is available this weekend. It’s at the edge of the main village (near the Westin), has 2 full bathrooms, full kitchen, fold-out sofa, pool & hot tubs. And it’s run by Delta hotels, so there’s no need to bring sheets/towels/dishes… There are officially beds for 6 in there, but they’ve done 8 by getting a couple of roll-away cots. It’s cozy, but not bad.
It’s $160/night but if you get 6 people in there, it’s fantastic for Whistler, especially given the location. If booked through Delta hotels the place goes for $450/night at this time of year.
It’s for Friday & Saturday nights… Feb 6 & 7, check-out by 11am Feb 8. She would REALLY prefer to get someone to take both nights, if possible, but if someone just wants one, then the $160 is totally firm. If someone wants both nights but can’t quite swing $320, then there could be some wiggle room.
Email her at designgirl@gmail.com if you’re interested.
I do hope someone will be able to take advantage of this opportunity, as I know for sure I will NOT be able to do so!
Cover It Live as a live-blogging tool has started to gain momentum in recent months, I think. Even the newspaper The Star and (I think The National Post but not sure) used it to cover the Inauguration of President Barack Obama (link is to The Star).
Things that sort of confused me that need work with CoverItLive:
– When you approve a comment, it stays in a window. Unless you’re getting very few comments (which NEVER happens to me, at least) the window stays and hovers. Confusing. Two or three times I thought I needed to approve comments that had already appeared on the stream.
– Sometimes, if your mouse hovers accidentally over the question (?) button, you get an explanatory window. That’s rather annoying.
Tips to best use CoverItLive
– Use the timer to announce that you’re taking a break. I took a 5 minute break while Colleen took other notes that will be added to the wiki.
– Remember that hitting the ENTER key will NOT publish the text. Make sure your mouse is pointed on the “Send” button.
– Accept all comments immediately – will save you time while you’re trying to make sense of the text.
– Insert the code for your liveblog BEFORE you start liveblogging.
– If you really want the SEO, you might want to export the text of your liveblog and uploaded using WordPress’ interface.
– Use the Twitter and hashtag integration tool to save you time and enrich the blog.
My summary
CoverItLive it’s an excellent tool, but of course, it DOES require you to be online all the time and have a solid internet connection. If I weren’t doing a liveblog, I’d just go with BlogDesk, which is rather reliable. I also concur with Rebecca’s opinion – it doesn’t give you any SEO, and I think that’s totally bollocks so I’d appreciate if the developers of Cover It Live would change the settings or something.
I’m at the RCS headquarters where I can see Colleen, Shawn, Jenn, Ianiv, Roland, Kris, Robert and . A few other participants I don’t know, but I’m sure they’ll check the liveblog
This time I am using CoverItLive, as a first test.
The power of social media for social change is amazing, I believe. I was live-bloggging NetTuesday the other day and had a chance to meet Megan Yarema, who leads the project Jabu Bags. What is Jabu Bags? In their own words, their mission is:
To assist rural women in Swaziland with poverty alleviation through employment and skill sharing in the art of sewing, and encourage empowerment through financial independence and training. We also look to ease the strain of HIV/AIDS related issues facing families in this process by providing job opportunities close to home and promoting awareness in the communities.
Personally, I find this project really interesting. Their webpage on Give Meaning can be found on this link, and if you want to purchase a bag, I’d suggest contacting Megan directly (her email is on the website).
My friends from AdHack (led by James Sherrett) in video creation association with Giant Ant Media (Jay Grandin, Leah Nelson and Jess Sloss) have recently launched a really funny contest (Show Us Your Balls, with a tennis-themed video) and Boxcar Marketing (Monique Trottier) wrote an excellent press release that explains how to create stellar ads.
I’d embed the video so that you could see how funny it is and to encourage you to write the sequel and join the contest, but… better if YOU check it out.
I wasn’t going to cave. I was going to resist. I was going to be “the only guy who wasn’t on Facebook and still was part of Vancouver’s social media world”. Well, not anymore. Yes, I caved. I have been assimilated. Of course, I am going to crank up the privacy settings and I hope people don’t feel bad because I don’t “friend” everyone. But it’s true – my social media credibility goes down if I’m not on Facebook. So, here I am! I have been assimilated. I joined Facebook. Resistance WAS futile 🙂
This morning, we were having a conversation over Twitter in regards to whether it is appropriate to have all your degrees from the same university. I complained this morning, because I was browsing the site of one of the academic departments of a prestigious (loca) university, where one of the faculty members had done a BA, MA and PhD all in the same university.
While I understand the constraints to mobility that having a family poses, I also realize that the reason behind this paradigm is to make faculty members broaden their horizons. So the theory is that if you do your undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees in different universities, you will have absorbed different cultures, and be more well-rounded.
The case was also made about interdisciplinarity. I happen to have been educated in three different countries (Canada, England, Mexico) and in three different areas (environmental studies, chemical engineering, business administration). But I can’t say that this is the model to follow. I did one of my Masters degrees in the same university as I did my PhD, so that’s why I was feeling somewhat self-conscious.
It’s true – we need to re-examine the academic paradigms, not only with regards to interdisciplinarity but also with regards to what defines well-rounded. I, for example, think I would be a great addition to the faculty of the same university where I did my PhD. But, likelihood that I’ll be hired for a tenure-track there? Very slim. I wonder how much re-thinking about this will be done and when.
Nancy tweeted a Money Question this afternoon on whether we disagree with sports figures earning as much money as they do when there is so much poverty and disadvantaged people struggling to get by.
Daily Money Q to ponder: Are we OK with sports figures earning the salaries they do, while other citizens are in desperate circumstances?
It is RARE that I get asked questions that make my blood boil and that’s perhaps one of them (not because Nancy asked it – Nancy is a very dear friend of mine – it’s because I rarely think about this issue, and when I do, I always get upset).
When I teach Public Policy (both at the undergraduate and graduate level), I always have a lecture on fairness, equity and justice. These are always important topics for decision-makers in designing public policies. Why? Because, with a limited amount of resources you have to do a gazillion things. So you (as a policy maker) need to prioritize. What can I do with these resources and how can I best put them to good use to serve the public interest? What is fair and equitable and just? Is it fair that these sports figures (or politicians) are paid THAT much?
I always ask my students (and whomever listens to me, whenever I give a keynote or an invited talk) to think about issues in terms of trade-offs. If I spend X thousands of dollars on implementing Y policy, then I get Z results (in terms of people taken off the streets, or streets paved, or seats funded for post-secondary education, or litres of water treated). But since resources are scarce, I have to spend them on Y policy instead of W policy, then I am trading off something. I am giving resources to a cause and NOT to another. There’s a zero sum game, where some win, some lose.
For example, think about it this way – if instead of paying multi-million dollar salaries to sports figures (or politicians), you could spend all that money in something else.
Let me give you the figure I used as an example for Nancy (as listed below)
hummingbird604 I do have a firm opinion – it’s stupid. With 1 month Mexican soccer team’s salaries I’d pay 5 years of PhD ed for 100 pple
This time, I’ll do the exercise with the actual salaries I knew of. The office of the wife of the former President of Mexico was spending about $ 300,000 dollars per month (at the time I did this calculation – right now, said office does not exist as far as I know). What would you do with $ 300,000 dollars? Well, I can tell you one thing – given the monthly allowance that Mexican granting councils gave to PhD students at the time (I was doing my PhD then), you could fund the monthly allowance of 300 PhD students with the money this otherwise useless office used. 300. PhD-level, smart, intelligent people. Per month.
Think about it, people. What do you say is the best use of your money? Educating 300 people with PhDs or ensuring that the wife of the President has a nice office and staff for her ‘charity’ work? Whenever I reflect on it, I am always reminded of what my Dad used to tell me – “for the Romans, bread and circuses“. I have the same opinion of high salaries for sports figures.
I had promised Shallom and Kris that I would swing by LameCamp and I fulfilled my promise. Was very happy to see Corinna and Adam, Lorraine, Greg, Chris, Ian, Terri, and a bunch of other awesome people whose names are escaping me but that you guys will help me remember.
After a few drinks at The Cambie and contests and stuff (of which I won one for making a Spirit Hummingbird face) I proceeded to head to Broadway Skytrain station for some awesome Rock Band with my civilian friends R, N and A. We had SUCH an amazing time. Not surprisingly, my brain isn’t operating at full capacity right now but I had an awesome time at both events. And managed not to make a fool of myself in both (well, with the exception of one spilled beer, but nothing really major).
This was definitely my high moment – Doing the bass for Sex Type Thing on Rock Band. Enjoy!
As I am making my bed (on a Saturday afternoon at 4:00pm and already knowing that I’m late for LameCamp) I got to thinking – why am I making my bed and washing dishes/floors/bathrooms so late? Why am I not following my usual routines of -waking up – having breakfast – doing dishes so as to avoid any clutter?
Do you procrastinate with chores such as cleaning up and/or laundry/shopping? How do you deal with stuff that you know you HAVE to do but you HATE to do (such as washing bathroom floors)?
And here I thought I was going to beat everyone by THIS MUCH to write about how to use Twitter in an academic context and… guess what? Somebody beat me to it. Yes, the blog “AcademHack” wrote about the usefulness of Twitter in the classroom, and funny how it goes, I found about it on the January 28th, 2008 issue of Wired Campus (in The Chronicle of Higher Education). Given that I am an educator (mostly third/fourth year university undergraduates but I’ve also taught at the Masters and PhD levels), I always find it funny when something I use for fun is deemed valuable in my own professional context.
The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve realized that even those established newsletters like The Chronicle of Higher Education have actually been blogs all along. Well-researched, meaningful blogs, but blogs nonetheless. Their short columns are widely read, online, time-stamped, although one element is not present there that is totally Web 2.0: the bi-directionality. Mostly, The Chronicle’s articles are just written by the author, posted and there is no bi-directional interaction between author and reader.
When I think about Twitter and its use in academia, I often had wondered how I’d react to students of mine tweeting back and forth at me. Given that I didn’t feel comfortable with my students “friending me” on Facebook (and hence one of the key reasons why I don’t use it) I thought I wouldn’t be comfortable with Twitter and my students. However, one of my former students (and one of the best, I might add) has recently joined Twitter, and while we don’t follow each other on my personal account, I had a chance to chat with him in person recently and we talked about the microblogging tool.
Right now, I kind of wish that my students were on Twitter. We could keep in touch (although some people say that that’s exactly what Facebook is for), but I can also see the potential value in the classroom for interacting with the professor, particularly in a remote location (distance education) and when the student is particularly shy (he/she could send me a DM and answer a particular question).
Those of you who have used Twitter and are academics/educators/teachers, how else would you use Twitter in the classroom?
Just when I thought I had scooped a new restaurant opening, I saw on the newspaper that Andrew Morrison (now of Scout Magazine fame) had already written about the fact that The Wallflower was opening in the space where defunct Aurora Bistro used to be. While I am NOT at all happy with the demise of Aurora Bistro (who would be happy about restaurants closing? Not me, that’s for sure!), I am glad that at least someone decided to use the space, and renovate it in such an interesting way.
The Wallflower Modern Diner is exactly that – a modern diner. Its room is well decorated although during the day may look a bit dark (but that’s ok – it’s not terribly dark). K and L took me there for brunch recently (as we all thrive in trying out new restaurants, and we hadn’t hung out in a long while). K ordered a set of breakfast sliders (small burgers with scrambled eggs as the filling), L ordered a burger with a salad side and I ordered an omelette.
While in my opinion it was good value for the money (omelette for $ 7.00 – about standard in comparison to other breakfast places around the neighbourhood), I wasn’t really excited with the rest of the brunch menu. I have to be fair to them – they just started operations literally, 2 weeks ago. I’d be more than happy to sit down with them and recommend a few items if they wanted me to.
Good news for The Wallflower are that the place seems to be successful so far. When K and L and I went there, it was packed literally 15 minutes after 11 in the morning. I think that it will be a successful venture, as the menu, the room, the decor and the staff are all the same – non-pretentious, comforting, and welcoming. I really want The Wallflower to succeed, to be quite frank. I don’t have a stake in the restaurant (I don’t even really know the owners) but I sincerely wish them well. I want my neighbourhood (Mount Pleasant) to thrive, and in these uncertain economic conditions, I will certainly spend my money in local restaurants.
I haven’t tried The Wallflower for dinner, but once I do (and once my friend K sends me the photo of my brunch) I’ll update this post.
Many of you may know that my WP-Stats plugin isn’t working. It’s slightly perplexing to me because, well, my friend Beth just recently migrated her blog to a self-hosted model, and her stats are working just fine. It may be the fact that right now I’m redirecting my wordpress.com to the hummingbird604.com blog. Not sure exactly what’s causing it, but it has given me a newfound freedom.
Since I really haven’t been looking too much at my stats for the past month or so, I’ve been writing with even more freedom than I did before. Does a particular post appeal to people? All the better. But I don’t really look at what makes people react or what kind of posts make my traffic go through the roof.
Sure, there are some instances where I might need my blog stats. And some moments when they might come in handy. But for the most part, I’m feeling again the freedom I felt when I started blogging. I still blog for myself, and I still write what I want. But this sensation is incredibly freeing. So is the feeling that I could, if I ever wanted to, exit the Vancouver social media world. Yes, my friends. There *is* such a thing as pulling a Greta Garbo.
I strongly believe that where I am, regardless of what I do, regardless of how often I blog or what topics I write about, the people who really care about me will continue to do so, whether I’m a blogger or not. Whether I am an academic or not. Those who love me for who I am are the ones that count in my life. I don’t write for the money, the fame or the success. I write because I love communicating with other people and sharing myself, my thoughts, my life and my friendship.
Those who want to take it, are most welcome in my world. Because, you know? I am always free. I’m free to do of my life whatever I want it to be. And I’m quite happy with my life as is.
UPDATE – 5:00pm — I’m here with Jay, Leah, Jess and a few visitors (Kris Krug, Lorraine Murphy, Ianiv Schweber, amongst a few others) at the Giant Ant Media open house (307 West Cordova). We’re consuming beer, Chinese food and celebrating the opening of their awesome studio! I won’t be liveblogging a lot because I am meeting one of my closest friends for drinks tonight but I wanted to congratulate Jay and Leah for their excellent space. I’ll be coming and visiting more given that my office is at The Network Hub!
Credit: Ianiv on Flickr
UPDATE -5:59 pm — I’m here with Brendon Wilson, Arieanna Schweber, Tyler Wilman, Ian Wish, Matt from Aesthetic Poetic, Shawn Preece-Hall, Rob Lewis from TechVibes, Warren Freyburg, and a number of other fine folks whom I may or may not have met before… It’s a great crowd and the energy is picking up. Funny how it goes, people are actually asking me if I’m really liveblogging (I’ve got my “I’m blogging this” t-shirt that Rebecca gave me). I am, indeed, liveblogging.
UPDATE 6:10 pm – Thanks to Ianiv and his iPhone, I can have photos — he has a great application that uploads directly on to his Flickr account. I should probably get another beer and go back to the party. People should also check the “Year of the Ant” video produced by Giant Ant Media. I am wondering, where is Duane? He was supposed to be here too, at some point.
Having lived in Vancouver (and in Canada) for the better part of the past 12 years, it still shocks me that people who live in this beautiful country think that we actually have A LOT of water simply because it rains a lot.
The concept of water stress (water extracted/demanded in relation to water that is really available) is a good metric to understand why we need to conserve water (and stop flushing so much water into the sewage streams!). In situations of high uncertainty, we need to ensure that the availability of water exceeds forecasted demands.
With growing population and increased demands on the precious liquid, the general feel I get from my conversations with the general public is that there is a broad perception that water is readily available in Canada. For the record, only 0.06% of the 2% of the global water availability is actually drinking water. The rest is neither readily available nor appropriate for human consumption.
This graph (the worldwide map of global water stress from the World Water Council) shows that North America actually has a high degree of water stress, despite conventional perceptions.
Source: World Water Council
My hope is that in the near future, the public will realize that 1 billion people lack access to improved water supplies (source: World Water Assessment, UNESCO) and that a global water balance is going to leave many millions of people without access to water while we waste it here in Canada shamelessly. Remember that nothing is local anymore, we need to think globally.
Quite frankly, the only reason why I did this post is to get in on the increased traffic that TweetDeck is having on Twitter, no other reason. Well, there’s another one. Since I use TweetDeck I have been able to increase the number of people I follow to about 300. I couldn’t have been able to do that with any other tool
I know that Twhirl lovers will tell me about the multiple accounts, the Seeismic integration and small, nicer interface. And yes I did love the yellow DMs and the green @ replies. But I frankly doubt I’ll switch from TweetDeck.
And yes, I know there are some people out there who get all upset about yet another blog post written about Twitter. It is to those that I dedicate this post 🙂
The last day before my friend Yam left Canada, Lorraine, him and I went for a very nice walk along the English Bay seawall. We then proceeded to walk up to Davie Street to get some food (as it would probably be the only area where we could find sustenance that late at night, or early in the day).
Hamburger Mary’s is an icon of the West End/Davie Street dining scene. Yam, Lorraine and I had each one of us a burger, if I recall correctly. My burger was excellent, and probably one of the best I’ve had in the Vancouver dining scene. The service was excellent, and the company was stellar.
We had a really fun time, as Hamburger Mary’s has a jukebox and I spent a while playing some good tunes. The funniest thing is that a cutie was trying to hit on me and told me “I love you”, trying to stop us on our way to the restaurant. Sorry, that doesn’t cut it at 2.30am…
Overall, I would definitely recommend Hamburger Mary’s for a late-night dinner. Located at the corner of Bute and Davie, this is a great diner. I’d definitely come back again.
As mentioned in my previous post, I couldn’t make it to Taste BC, but through John Chow, I connected with Ed Lau and he was kind enough to be my representative and guest blogger for this excellent event. Here are Ed’s impressions of Taste BC – thanks Ed!
Held at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown, Taste B.C. is a food and wine tasting event put on by Liberty Wine Merchants each year to raise funds for B.C. Children’s Hospital – Oak Tree Clinic. So not only do we get to sample a number of wines and great food but it all goes to a worthy cause. There were probably 40 different companies sampling their wines for increasingly tipsy party-goers and about five or six tables with some food to go with all the alcohol.
John Chow and I arrived to a mostly packed house and were handed wine glasses at the door. The first table we stopped at was Mon Bella Bistoria, which was serving Saltspring Island mussels and smoked salmon. We weren’t that impressed with the mussels, served with preserved lemon, peppers, and fire-roasted tomato.
But we agreed that the smoked salmon with capers, tarragon mayo on French crisps were rather good.
Rodney’s Oyster House as on site shucking fresh oysters, served with a variety of sauces. They had one type of hot sauce that nearly burned off my lips!
Gastropod is usually a solid bet for great food but they were rather disappointing tonight. In fact, I don’t even remember what these were. They were tepid and didn’t taste like anything in particular.
I love a good beef dip sandwich and these from O’Douls are no exception.
I mean, look at all that moist, juicy beef…
John was particularly amazed that they managed to make such tiny sandwiches.
The clear winner in terms of food at Taste B.C. was Miku Restaurant and their aburi-style sushi, which is lightly seared and brushed with various sauces.
This is two types of meguro tuna. These were delicious and we agreed that we had to try Miku at some point.
And this is a seared salmon on sticky rice, which is an interesting take on sushi rice.
I know Taste B.C. is all about wine tasting but my opinion on wine probably isn’t worth much. I did, however, get to try some fantastic beers from Russell Brewing and R&B Brewing.
John thought it was sort of ridiculous to drink beer out of a wine glass but…hey, remember where we are…
That isn’t to say there weren’t some great wines as well. Probably the most memorable was the apple ice wine from Forbidden Fruit Winery.
I also went to try some of the drinks made by Fentiman’s. I love finding small batch, natural colas and other carbonated drinks. Once you’ve had a cola made from all-natural ingredients like cane sugar, cinnamon, etc, you really don’t want any more of those artificial mainstream drinks. In fact, I even enjoyed the tonic water, which I really didn’t expect since most tonic water is just gross. We’ve had several people throw up chugging tonic water during our annual REVscene summer meets.
If you have any sort of interest in wine and good food, Taste B.C. is the place to be, especially since it goes toward the B.C. Children’s Hospital so if you can make it next year, see if you can get yourself some tickets. Let us know too so we can say hi.
Having lived in Vancouver (and in Canada) for the better part of the past 12 years, it still shocks me that people who live in this beautiful country think that we actually have A LOT of water simply because it rains a lot.
