I had wanted to come to Tsunami Sushi for a while now, but truth be told, I had been way too busy to ever make it for dinner. But since it’s located close to where Minna goes to do yoga, one night we just decided to swing by and have some sushi. I didn’t know that the main tenet of tsunami is that you sit around the bar and you choose the food you want to eat (in conveniently priced small plates).
I am a fan of nigiri sushi, so I had a field day. I’m also a big fan of “just eat what your stomach wants you to eat” – I definitely would want to come back again, though I probably wouldn’t eat as much as I did last time. The sushi is good, the portions are generous and the prices aren’t all that bad.
Given that I’ve been sick all of the past week, I haven’t been able to follow up with my Vancouver International Fringe Festival 2010 shows, and have missed most of them. This is very unfortunate, particularly because most of my favorite actors in Vancouver and British Columbia are presenting amazing shows. One of the ones I wanted to check out and I’m hoping one of you will be able to check out as it’s quite innovative is Escape I and II. Live and for the first time ever Kathy Parsons and Martin Gover present Escape Artists I and II at this years Vancouver Fringe Festival. Presented on the Fire Escape at the corner of Johnson and Old Bridge Streets, on Granville Island.
Rain or shine, storm or fair, escape artists will be there. I have seen Joel and Kaitlin in previous theatre performances so I’m looking forward to finding some time to check them out. I suggest you do too!
I consider myself blessed with the friendship of Airdrie Miller. As I have mentioned before, the one great gift that blogging and social media have given has been amazing friends. Air and I are so similar in so many ways. We both share a love of all things fashion/cosmetics (so much so that she invited me to be a guest host on Lip Gloss and Laptops, the podcast/website she founded with her friend KA, and which she continues to maintain, a few times).
We are both educators (she is a science and math teacher, I teach political science, but still, teach quantitative research tools too), we are both geeks and we share a passion to make a difference in this world. It was Airdrie and her organizing Coping Digitally at Northern Voice that inspired me to co-organize Mental Health Camp with Isabella. Today, and every day, Air, I hope you know just how much I value your friendship and we’ll have to celebrate with a MargaritaCamp soon!
Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year at UBC, and that also marks my return to undergraduate teaching again (from the summer hiatus). Being on campus is important to me, for many reasons. It gives me a chance to talk with students and colleagues in an academic setting. It reminds me that, in addition to my consulting and my social media life, I have my academic career to take care of.
Because, for all the awesome things that I do professionally (consulting, research), I absolutely adore teaching. And I did a PhD because I love academic life, with its highs and lows. I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone else’s.
It’s back-to-school week for me (aka absolute insanity) but I need to highlight this really important event. The Crisis Centre of British Columbia (@crisiscentre on Twitter) brough to my attention this event that will take place on Friday at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the commemoration of World Suicide Prevention Day (September 10th). Due to my involvement in organizing Mental Health Camp, I have learned more about what can be done to prevent suicides, and how important this topic is.
From their blog post:
Several community groups are organizing a commemorative event on World Suicide Prevention Day to remember those who have died by suicide, support those who grieve, and to raise public awareness that reducing the risk of suicide requires community participation.
The event will take place outside the Vancouver Art Gallery (Georgia, between Howe and Hornby) from 11:45 am to 1:00 pm on Friday September 10, 2010 and will feature speakers, music, drumming, a candle lighting ceremony and a minute of silence.
Attendees and participants are encouraged to bring serviceable shoes in honour of loved ones who have died by suicide . These will be placed in a display on the steps of the Art Gallery, commemorating the hundreds of people who die by suicide every year in BC. After the ceremony, the shoes will be donated to Lookout Emergency Aid Society.
Through MHC as well I learned from the @unsuicide initiative, run by Sandra Kiume, a very important project on suicide prevention.
I’ve enjoyed the outdoors in British Columbia a great deal. Have had the opportunity to hike in several of our beautiful provincial parks and done many of the hikes that are traditional in the province (including, of course, my very favorite, The Stawamus Chief in Squamish, BC). This past Friday I went on a day hike there, in order to climb the three peaks of The Chief.
The next day, I was supposed to cover LIVE At Squamish, a fantastic music festival. I had lodging, media passes, everything. I even was going to see many of my friends there. Little did I know that I would have to miss it. As I was about to complete the hike, in my efforts to avoid crashing on to a couple who were (inappropriately, I might add, they should have moved out of my way) right in my path, I swerved and crashed with my left hand first.
The pain was so unbearable that left me most of Friday, all of Saturday and Sunday in an arm brace, and unable to type. This added to my frustration as I have a number of giveaways for the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (VLAFF) and the Vancouver International Film Festival (which I couldn’t write because I was . On top of this, the new semester is about to start at UBC. I was pretty much unable to work all weekend and had to miss LIVE At Squamish. The lesson I learned – never, ever do a rough hike one day before you are due to cover an important music event, and much less, 3 days before beginning a new university term.
I don’t think my fall would have been preventable, but I could have just waited until nobody was in line of sight. All in all, I still love The Chief. I just have learned my lesson.
Relephant Theatre is a relatively new theatre company who recently reached out to me to tell me about their two productions: The Exquisite Hour and Dr. Horrible Sing-along Blog. I have a pair of tickets for a lucky reader for each of the two productions (2 sets of 2 tickets).
A seemingly well-adjusted bachelor finds his life forever altered on a summer evening in 1962 when an alluring encyclopaedia saleswoman materializes in his backyard to make an unusual sales pitch… The next hour of real time will surprise and delight in this witty and romantic screwball comedy by Fringe favourite Stewart Lemoine.
And for another favorite, the Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is a live theatre production based on Joss Whedon’s popular online short film. This hilarious musical tragicomedy sees young Billy takes on the status-quo as he sets out to change the world under the guise of Dr. Horrible. Aspiring to join the infamous Evil League of Evil, Billy inadvertently introduces his nemesis, Captain Hammer, to Penny, the girl of his dreams.
Performances:
10-Sept Fri 7pm
11-Sept Sat 11pm
12-Sept Sun 9pm
13-Sept Mon 9pm
14-Sept Tues 5pm
17-Sept Fri 7pm (added show!)
17-Sept Fri 9pm
18-Sept Sat 2pm
18-Sept Sat 9pm (added show!)
19-Sept Sun 9pm
Performances will take place at the FIREHALL ARTS CENTRE (280 East Cordova Street, Vancouver)
To increase exposure of all the Fringe shows I’ve been offered tickets for, I’ll be running Twitter-only contests. For a chance to win tickets to The Exquisite Hour, you can tweet the following:
I want to win tickets from @hummingbird604 and @JessieRelephant to The Exquisite Hour @VanFringe.
or, in the case of Dr. Horrible Singalong Blog
I want to win tickets from @hummingbird604 and @JessieRelephant to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog @VanFringe.
I will draw all winners to my Fringe Festival shows on Wednesday September 8th at 10am, so stay tuned!
I’m Mexican, and it would be embarrassing and a shame if I didn’t promote the films originated in my own country. So, I am pleased to announce that I am giving away 5 pairs of tickets to the Mexican gala of the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival 2010. The feature film is Alamar by Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio (video below). For a chance to win tickets, simply tweet the sample tweet below, drop a comment on this post or retweet the post using the Twitter button below.
Jorge and Roberta have been separated for several years. They simply come from opposite worlds. He likes an uncomplicated life in the jungle, while she prefers a more urban existence. He is Mexican and she is Italian, and she has decided to return to Rome with their five-year-old son, Natan. But before they leave, Jorge wishes to take young Natan on a trip, hoping to teach him about his Mayan origins in Mexico. As father and son spend more time together, Natan begins a learning experience that will remain with him forever. “Alamar was inspired by the simplicity of happiness.” – Pedro González-Rubio
A sample tweet below (you can also drop a comment or retweet from within the blog post):
I want to win tickets to the Mexican gala of @VLAFF
You have until Wednesday September 7th at 10am to enter my giveaway.
Continuing with my Vancouver International Fringe Festival giveaways, another play that looks like it will be a great show is Oh! The Humanity & Other Good Intentions. The one thing that attracted me the most to this particular set of plays was precisely that it wasn’t just one play but it was a combo.
Oh! The Humanity! & Other Good Intentions, a series of 5 short plays about people trying to cope with the basic trial of being human among other humans. Two actors craft four characters each, including a coach who calls a press conference to explain why his team has lost every game in the season, a video dating service promoting two people that have nothing better to recommend themselves than the fact that they are not visibly bleeding, a pair of photographers attempting to reshoot a graphic war time photo without the original source material, a couple attempting to attend a funeral, or possibly a christening, no, a funeral, with poor results, an airline representative explaining to the families of crash victims what happened to the best of her abilities – despite the fact she lucked, or rather unlocked, her way into the job.
Show times:
Thursday, Sept 9th- 6pm
Friday, Sept 10th -5pm (10% of proceeds to be donated to the Food Bank)
Saturday, Sept 11th -6pm
Sunday, Sept 12th -8:45pm
Wednesday, Sept 15th- 8pm
Thursday, Sept 16th -10:45pm
Friday, Sept 17th -7pm
Saturday, Sept 18th -5:45pm & 10:30pm
Sunday, Sept 19th -2pm
Tickets $10 at the door weekday (Monday – Thursday) anytime and weekend late night (10:00 p.m. or later), and $12 at the door weekend (Friday – Sunday) before 10:00 p.m., $2 surcharge applies to advance online or Fringe Box Office sales. Tickets are available at the Fringe website.
To increase exposure of all the Fringe shows I’ve been offered tickets for, I’ll be running Twitter-only contests. For a chance to win tickets to Oh! The Humanity & Other Good Intentions, you can tweet the following:
I want to win tickets from @hummingbird604 to Oh! The Humanity & Other Good Intentions @VanFringe. More info here http://is.gd/eXbi6
I will draw all winners to my Fringe Festival shows on Wednesday September 8th at 10am, so stay tuned!
Loyal readers of my blog may remember that I co-organized Mental Health Camp Vancouver (2009 and 2010) with my good friend Isabella Mori. For obvious reasons, I have an interest and somewhat of a stake in mental health issues (a few of my close friends have battled a number of mental illnesses including depression, bipolar, and eating disorders, and some of them continue to fight a few of those). So when Theatre Asylum invited me to give away tickets to their Vancouver International Fringe Festival show “The Boy Who Had a Mother”, I definitely wanted to showcase them.
A young man grows up with a mentally ill mother and an ill-prepared father. We follow his life from conception to adulthood when he decides to move back into his mother’s house to help save her from herself. But it may be him who needs saving.
You can find out more about this production here (Asylum Theatre website and Twitter). Asylum Theatre was founded in 2009 by husband and wife team
Jeff McMahan and Liz Wilton. Based in Vancouver, BC, and their mission is to provide playwrights, actors, designers and other theatre professionals who are affected by physical and mental illness an opportunity to explore their craft in a supportive setting. The Boy Who Had A Mother marks Asylum’s second production following 2009’s The Man Who Couldn’t Deliver which was presented in the 25th Vancouver International Fringe Festival at Pacific Theatre.
The Boy Who Had a Mother takes place at Studio 16 (1555 W 7th Ave) on the following dates/times:
Friday, September 10 – 8:25pm
Saturday, September 11 – 9:40pm
Sunday, September 12 – 2:35pm
Wednesday, September 15 – 9:20pm
Friday, September 17 – 5:00pm
Saturday, September 18 – 3:45pm
Tickets: Available by visiting the Vancouver Fringe website, or by visiting the Fringe Box Office at 1592 Johnston Street on Granville Island. Only $10 for weekday shows & $12 for weekend shows
To increase exposure of all the Fringe shows I’ve been offered tickets for, I’ll be running Twitter-only contests. For a chance to win tickets to The Boy Who Had a Mother, you can tweet the following:
I want to win tickets from @hummingbird604 and @AsylumTheatre to The Boy Who Had a Mother @VanFringe. More info here http://is.gd/eX8Dh
I will draw all winners to my Fringe Festival shows on Wednesday September 8th at 10am, so stay tuned!
I remember this song from my childhood. My parents used to dance to this song at parties to no end and it brings a tear to my eyes every time I hear it, because it reminds me of very happy times. My parents are two of the most amazing individuals that have ever graced the face of Earth, and seeing them dance to this song really made me realize how much, despite however different their personalities may be, they absolutely adored me and my brothers. I hope you enjoy lowdown by Boz Scaggs as much as I do.
So, I’m a newbie camper in British Columbia. I have camped extensively in Mexico, and I’m not really afraid of camping (although, for me, camping means hot shower, warm bed and wifi… but I digress). The truth is, I always wanted to explore camping in British Columbia, and I don’t know much about what I should bring, etc. Obviously a tent and a good, warm sleeping bag would be good ideas, plus food and water. I’ve got my eyes set on Squamish (The Chief) though I’ve heard some good suggestions about Golden Ears Provincial Park. I know, it’s the long weekend, and there will be some camping grounds that will be full. So, I’m prepared to just go up for the day (unless we find space and can pitch the tent).
What other obvious points I might be missing? Food, of course. Bug spray? Have at it on the comments section!
I will fully admit that sometimes it takes me a while to get to respond to comments on my blog. More recently, because I have hosted contests and giveaways on my blog, and because I have also done a lot of restaurant reviews, I had neglected to respond to comments on my blog. As you know, I am the organizer of the Vancouver Blogger Meetup, and someone who often gives talks about blogging and building online communities.
Given this, I think I had legitimate reasons to feel embarrassed today as I was browsing some of my well-established blogger friends’ blogs and realized how much I had neglected my own comments. The practice of responding to comments is one of the pillars (as I often have emphasized) of building strong, healthy online communities. So I went back and responded to a number of comments that my readers had left on this blog.
This is a good reminder that, no matter how well-established your blog is, the only way to sustain and grow a robust online community is to pay attention to the most important people who joins you in the conversation: your readers. I would not be where I am (in terms of how much my blog has grown) if it were not because of all of you who continue to read my blog!
It’s August 31st and I am (as usual) planning for the month ahead. Moreover, since the beginning of the academic term is next week (right after Labour Day) I am also planning for the next few months. I But the one thing that I began to think about as I was – when are we supposed to actually take stock and see what we accomplished? On the day of the end of the month? Or afterwards? When do YOU assess what you accomplished over a period of time?
Despite the fact that I’ve been to Lighthouse Park more times than I can remember, I never wrote about it. But today I was browsing through my Flickr set and found a few photos from the very first time I visited WITH a digital camera (I had been before without a camera). To get to Lighthouse Park we took Marine Drive (the North Vancouver version) and followed it Then we turned left on Beacon Lane. You need to hike a short distance to get to the actual viewing points. While the drive took us from Denman and Georgia to the actual park about 25 minutes, this was without driving over the speed limit of 30 km/hr (a bit crazy, if you ask me!)
I think Lighthouse Park is one of those attractions in the Lower Mainland that everybody should do at some point in their lives.
Most people who think about Melissa Manchester seem to recall “Through the Eyes of Love”, the theme from Ice Castles (the movie), a beautiful song indeed. But the one song that earned Melissa Manchester a Grammy for Best Vocal Performance is this one (“You Should Hear How She Talks About You“), which I actually was obsessed with when I was a child, because I could NEVER find out the name of this song. I was lucky enough to be at a cafe where this song was being played, so I asked the barista about the song’s title and while she didn’t know it, she found out that the singer was Melissa Manchester. Google did the rest for me 🙂 Enjoy!
I grew up in a family of five brothers where all of us were hyper-competitive, all of us were really focused on our integrated goals (arts, science, sports and volunteering). I, as my brothers, am a bit of a perfectionist. I like my work to be perfect. I like to under-promise and over-deliver. But I also have been learning (slowly) to accept that I am only a human.
Last night, JT and I went to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. It’s a beautiful park with an amazing view and it holds really special memories for both of us. We wanted to make sure to hit it at least once this year. As we were hiking towards the view point, I mentioned that I felt that I no longer had my finger on the pulse of the bodies of literature that I had studied before.
I have done rigorous research on industrial clusters and competitiveness. I’ve created game-theoretical models of strategic alliances between biotechnology companies and pharmaceutical enterprises. I’ve done mathematical modeling of firm demographics and applied these models to understanding industrial restructuring. I’ve studied how environmental non-governmental organizations create transnational networks. But you know what I realized yesterday? I no longer know these fields to the extent I used to.
And the fact is, when I got out of graduate school, I basically signed on to a lifetime of projects that would encompass a broad variety of topics. And I can’t be an expert in all of those. So, using a bit of what I learned in Susanne Conrad’s workshop, I am now giving myself permission to NOT be an expert in transnational networks of environmental non-governmental organizations. I give myself permission to NOT know EVERY single new article published in the field.
And giving myself this permission to not be the stellar researcher who knows EVERYTHING is actually key, because it allows me to focus on the two or three fields that I think I’ll be working on for the rest of my academic career. Instead of continuously struggle to maintain my finger on the pulse of every field I’ve ever done research on, I’ll have students or collaborators who will explore those topics. I can guide them at the beginning with what I’ve already done and they can build upon my previous work.
I am slowly, but surely, learning to give myself permission to NOT be “on” all the time. To not have all the answers at all points. And it feels amazingly liberating.
My Dad’s birthday was yesterday (August 29th) and I didn’t get to talk to him until today, Monday, but I’m glad I did, because our conversation is entirely related to SHIFTED. Dad and I were reminiscing about the many times when I have faced defeat and what I have done in the face of adversity. One of those times was, as a matter of fact, having to rewrite my entire doctoral dissertation. FROM SCRATCH.
Quite obviously, I succeeded and I feel very blessed to have the PhD degree. And that’s what’s so fascinating about SHIFTED. When Nathan Tippe told me about the conference, I didn’t actually know that it was a showcase of stories of the good, the bad and the ugly. SHIFTED will showcase how the five presenters (one of them actually who is a good friend of mine, Andrea Baxter) shifted their thinking, confronted adversity and succeeded.
Our world loves to celebrate success, but all too often we focus only on the end result and forget about the challenging journey of choice it takes to get there.
Prepare to get SHIFTED. We’re exposing the gritty truth of achieving success. It’s all about the moments where hard decisions are made and fears are faced head on. These are the moments where we SHIFT into new possibilities and create change that takes us closer to our dreams and aspirations. SHIFTED highlights five people’s success stories – their entire stories, good and bad. They will courageously share their defining moments. Come ready to learn and be inspired. Leave knowing that the challenges you face may actually be the pathways to your own success.
You can follow @getshifted on Twitter and purchase tickets (whose proceeds will go 100% to imagine1day) online. SHIFTED takes place at District 319 (on 319 Main) on September 9th, 2010 at 6:00pm.
I look forward to hearing the stories of these entrepreneurs, CEOs and competitive sports-people. I hope you’ll attend too.
Every so often I grab a Blogthings when I feel overwhelmed and I want to keep posting some content to my blog. This particular one really hit the spot because, well, I speak 7 languages. Probably because I keep adding languages to my bucket list!
You would like to turn your world upside down a little, and there’s no better way to do that than immersing yourself in a foreign culture.
Learning a new language would broaden your perspective and give you an inside look at another area of the world.
Getting to know a new language would challenge your brain as well as your expectations about another culture.
Your opportunities in life would also be expanded. Imagine where you could travel once you had another language under your belt!
I’m a fan of deep house, funky music. And this is perhaps one of my most favorite songs (The Night by Who Da Funk). The lyrics depict the kind of night life I sometimes lead, which is good. And the music is outstanding. Hope you like it as much as I do.
With my recent visit to Parksville and Qualicum Beach, I got to tour both towns by bus and walking. Qualicum Beach in particular struck me as a small, pleasant village. Downtown Qualicum Beach is pretty and has lots of restaurants, small cafes and clothing stores. I was pleasantly surprised that there was even an alternative (bioenergy) centre.
I can’t wait for my next trip to central Vancouver Island!
A few weeks ago, Minna, Jay, Nathan and I went to see Robin Hood (Minna won the tickets I gave away for the ITSAZOO Productions performance). We had a great time, and by the time the play was over, we were hungry so we settled on Alexis (formerly Alexis Taverna, and on FourSquare it reads Alexi’s). It’s a Greek food restaurant I had eaten at many times when I was doing my MBA and PhD.
While the service was really weird (the waitress must have had a really bad day, she wasn’t on top of her game), the food can’t be faulted as it’s always filling and flavourful. The owner is a really sweet guy and he remembered me from the many times I had eaten there. I am particularly fond of Alexis’ souvlakia as well as their melitzano.
I’ll have to come back another time as I don’t think it’s fair to assess the service of this particular waitress on a night when she probably was a bit off. But as I said, the food was good and I think Nathan, Minna and Jay liked it too. More importantly, I am glad that the Cambie corridor is getting more traffic, because honestly it was sad to see during the construction stages of the Canada Line.
I have been doing a lot of cleaning up and getting rid of stuff that I no longer use over the summer (particularly when my mom came, because I wanted to have my place tidy and ready for when she visited me. One of the things I hadn’t really had a chance to use lately was my “MyPlace” laptop workstation (pictured). My cousin M gave it to me last Christmas as she knew that I needed it for when I work at home. Truth be told, because I’m always at the office, I hadn’t used it in a few months.
But this morning, since I woke up early (and I’ve been feeling a bit cold with the changing weather from summer to fall), I decided to dust it open again and use it to do some work (even though it’s a Saturday, I still know that I have work to do, as the new semester starts in less than a week). And I’ve been working from the comfort of my bed. With the MyPlace table, I can sit in an ergonomically correct position and write.
I have used it before while writing on my couch, but I don’t feel the same degree of comfort as when I write in bed (probably because my bed doesn’t have the same degree of flexibility as my couch). The MyPlace laptop table works best, in my opinion, when you use it against a more firm surface. You can use it to raise your laptop to the height you need when working, for example, in your coffee table.
I remember that my cousin M bought the MyPlace for around $30 (plus tax), which I think is reasonable considering what the prices are for other laptop stands. Overall, I love it. And I’m glad I never got rid of it or recycled it!
Boasting the title of the cafe with “the best cheesecake in Vancouver), Trees Organic Cafe is a pretty nice coffee shop. I had been a frequent customer of the Granville and West Hastings location, up until when I discovered that there was another location in Gastown (on Water Street). Minna took me there for cheesecake and coffee. We weren’t disappointed.
The cheesecake (and yes, I know – I’m weird – I *hate* cheese but *love* cheesecake) is definitely to-die-for. The decor at Trees Organic Cafe is pretty nice, and I have enjoyed a couple of evenings there just alone (ironically, always bumping into a well-dressed young blond guy who is reading on his iPad). While there is free wifi, I found it spotty and at times I couldn’t connect. Overall, lovely cafe.
The cheesecake, at $6.50 is pretty pricey compared to other places, but definitely must be consumed with gusto. I will definitely come back.
I had wanted to come to Tsunami Sushi for a while now, but truth be told, I had been way too busy to ever make it for dinner. But since it’s located close to where Minna goes to do yoga, one night we just decided to swing by and have some sushi. I didn’t know that the main tenet of tsunami is that you sit around the bar and you choose the food you want to eat (in conveniently priced small plates). 
