Archive for April, 2007
April 25, 2007 at 10:49 am · Filed under Mundane
I bought toothpaste before leaving Canada. Still had some Japanese toothpaste left but for some reason toothpaste here (Japan) doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t seem potent enough. Sometimes I almost think there is sugar in it (but probably not). In Shopper’s a tube of Crest Pro-Health toothpaste caught my eye. The packaging claimed:
CAVITIES | GINGIVITIS | PLAQUE | SENSITIVITY | TARTAR | WHITENING | FRESHENS BREATH
as in avoids the first 5 and promotes the last 2.
I don’t quite understand the “Pro-Health” name. I mean…isn’t brushing your teeth in general…pro-health. The name didn’t do it for me and in fact it bothers me slightly whenever I go to brush my teeth.
I bought the cinnamon flavour. It doesn’t taste that great but it tastes like something that is cleaning my mouth, not candy, and that is good. The texture though…the texture might make me by this toothpaste again. Early this morning I fantasized about Pro-Health as the cookie dough of toothpastes.
Why am I talking about toothpaste?
Back safely and enjoying things a lot. Went to get groceries last night and there was an old man practicing nun chucks outside of the supermarket. No I don’t think this is a common occurrence so I wish I had my camera but…
April 23, 2007 at 3:27 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Speaking of being full, another Vancouver food note. Ali and I hit Opera Sushi on W Broadway and I tried their black (flax) sushi. It is unique and healthy (they say) and yummy. I ordered the natto and the woman working there (she seems to be a bit of a diva) raised an eyebrow and held her pencil hesitantly saying “you like natto….?” “Yes…” “ok” Had to order it to have natto in Vancouver but if I went back I would try another kind. I love natto but on its own - natto sushi is mediocre. But…go there.
April 23, 2007 at 3:27 am · Filed under Computers, Mundane
Leaving Vancouver. So tired, so full, so…I can’t feel the difference. I am going through the motions of my relationship with flying to Japan. This is the third time now. Only three times but it already feels regular. Sitting on a stool at a bar in the gate area cafeteria. A couple is sitting at the other end and when the guy taps the metal foot rest bar the vibrations travel to my end and remind me that other people are around me.
I’ve been wishing for things to find some stability. Wishing to remind myself of responsibility and what I need to do to…keep living? And live happy? But wishing for what I don’t have but want…I can’t do that. Ok I’d be lying if I said I never ever ever did that but really…I have so much. Vancouver reminds me of that. The flowers and the trees and the greenness remind me. The large houses and bright colours remind me. The encounters with people asking for money remind me. The choice…the choice I can slip into feeling like I need more and feeling unhappy for what I have but now, at this point I am reminded that I am lucky to have the choice.
A monitor hanging over the cafeteria area is showing a hockey game. Brought to us with Microsoft technology. It looks like an application on the computer showing the game is not responding. I wonder how long it has been like that and when someone will notice it and who that is and if they will worry about fixing it or if it is just routine. These moments of error and unresponsiveness are strange because had that blue/white/and grey box not been there, I would not have known that the hockey video was running on Windows. I would have glanced at that monitor and thought “a tv showing hockey”. But now I know which operating system and I wonder what other processes are currently running, what applications are installed, and what information is stored be it something important or something like web browsing history to find help on that problem causing an unresponsive program. The possibilities, the story behind the “thing” showing this hockey game has expanded. It is another world like the world I have on waffles here but full of foreign things and with its own purpose and history YET…it is built with familiar structure and interface.
When in my daily life am I an unresponsive program?
Across from me is a duty free hops with perfume and purses and watches and it’s funny how those products are valuable and the brands are up there but being in the duty free shop…they seem so cheap to me. Not cheap money-wise and hey! let’s go buy some but…tacky cheap. Why? When did I establish this idea? I’m always in airports alone so it is not from anyone else.
Well…it is time for me to wander somewhere else.
April 19, 2007 at 6:03 am · Filed under Words
from answers.com: u·surp (yū-sûrp‘, -zûrp‘)
v., -surped, -surp·ing, -surps. v.tr.
- To seize and hold (the power or rights of another, for example) by force or without legal authority.
- To take over or occupy without right: usurp a neighbor’s land.
- To take the place of (another) without legal authority; supplant.
v.intr.
Example? I baked cookies so that he would come to the kitchen, giving me the chance to usurp his spot on the couch.
April 19, 2007 at 3:18 am · Filed under Evil Things
The phone rang just around 10am this morning. Not too early but the house was still quiet. Maybe it is my mother - I remembered that she had called the other day. Which reminds me I should try calling back tonight.
I picked up the phone:
“Hello”
“I’m sorry, that is an incorrect response. Please press ‘1′ to learn more about how you can lower your interest rates.”
*steeeam* click!
Not only telemarketing but using a strategy that involves stating that the customer is incorrect! (Well…the word ‘incorrect’ may be wrong…I don’t have a memory for conversations but…it was something along those lines.)
April 17, 2007 at 4:25 am · Filed under Photographs
April 14, 2007 at 11:28 am · Filed under Theeeeeeeeeeesis, Words
I’ve been using this word - evaluation - and I just realized that it is totally not the word that I want to use.
This happens often. A word fits and you use it over and over again and one day you actually read the definition and realize how wrong it is for your ideas.
evaluation: the act or result of judging the worth or value of something or someone
At some point I made evaluation mean the act of seeking understanding and I guess at times people judge to seek understanding but I am more interested in understanding gained by stripping away judgements.
Now I need to find a new word. This is gonna take all Friday night folks.
April 14, 2007 at 8:47 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
April 13, 2007 at 9:36 am · Filed under Evil Things
Is it possible to start a no-talking-on-the-mobile-in-the-bus rule in Vancouver? Is it too late for that? Can they maybe put some signs up? Give people hints that it is a little intrusive? Yes now I am back in my own country so I can complain about the way things are. Maybe the no-calls-on-the-train standard works in Japan because people generally don’t like taking up too much of the public space (whether physical or the auditory space). I guess what surprises me is how it isn’t just people who take calls that happen to come during an inconvenient time. There are people who, instead of passing their time with a book or a sudoku, make sure that the social fabric of their life is always played by the breeze of their voice and occasional gusts of hearty laughter. Letting one person go they look out the window for 30 seconds, let out a long sigh and then open that address book once again. Why don’t people use SMS?
That’s my rant. I am grumpy right now because I had a trip to the dentist today. There’s another one tomorrow too and then crossing of fingers that I don’t require a root canal two months from now. Experiencing current pain. I don’t think it is completely from the fillings I received…but from needle wounds in the side of my mouth. Either that or while the left side of my face was frozen for half the day I accidently gnawed through my inner cheek. Time to lock myself in my room.
April 12, 2007 at 11:57 am · Filed under In the News
Arnie says that environmentalism should be sexy. I see what point he is trying to make. The guilt trip doesn’t work all the way and actually some of us, on disgruntled and anti-society days, might find our channels of guilt and revolt against them…until we feel even more guilty.
But consider what sexy currently motivates people to do. Consume, consume and consume. Fashion, beauty products, substance abuse, toys, the bigger the better, the more the merrier. Is it possible that a campaign to make concern for the environment hip could increase some areas of consumption and in effect cancel out any gain in environmental consciousness? OK maybe not but…it doesn’t sound like this effort will include making it square to drive an SUV and own 20 purses.
April 12, 2007 at 3:18 am · Filed under Art, In the Kitchen and Foodstuff, Theeeeeeeeeeesis
Lately. But I make sense of places with things in this order: food, architecture, vegetation, fashion so…food tops. No really, this is a happy find. I am in the Boulevard, a new coffee house on campus. It’s an alright place. Big, full or students but the sound level is not too bad, and I am enjoying the current artwork. A little expensive…when you see a student spend 4.45+tax on a chai latte you wonder how tuition can be complained about but…
…they have onigiri here! I was told you could find it in Vancouver but was not sure where. Now I have a source!! Chicken, tuna and konbu varieties. Bought one for lunch so today will be a happy day. (As long as the onigiri high can mask my tax return emotions.)
Speaking of tax return…
…actually no, let’s not talk about that.
Actually, I am reading a paper right now: Crafting participation: designing ecologies, configuring experience (Heath, Luff, vom Lehn, Hindmarsh, 2002) and in the beginning they talk about how visual art from the Renaissance onward (use paintings as specific examples) were designed to engage a viewer more and make the viewer an “active spectator”. The context of the spectator - their location, perspective of the artwork and the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and surrounding physical elements were taken into account to create different viewing experiences. An example given is of artwork in a chapel. A figure on an altarpiece might be gazing towards an image of a saint in the roof of the chapel. Upon seeing the figure a viewer will follow its gaze and discover the saint.
I think I have read about how artists do this before but today I am relating it to research considering a person’s location, physical relationship to other objects, etc. in the design of new technologies. How our devices might respond to our physical context, how technology can be used to create even more drastic variations on how we experience our environment, depending on our location within it. Just thinking about examples of that…none of them all that well formulated in my head so I am gonna stop here and go pick up my T4.
April 11, 2007 at 9:13 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Happy belated Easter everyone. Hope you had a good weekend. I spent mine making negotiations with mr. sleep. Easter Sunday passed by quite unceremoniously as I was not conscious enough for most of the morning to make an effort towards breakfast or even brunch and that is the meaning of Easter - morning food - isn’t it?
To make up for it this morning I met Ali at the Gypsy Rose Cafe for crepes. I have never gone to those other crepe restaurants. They are all over Japan and smell delicious but usually have limited seating (or seating in the cold) and I hate standing while eating. Don’t think I am missing out though because the Gypsy Rose Cafe makes crepes that are all I will ever want a crepe to be. Below is the now eaten spinach-feta-tomato.
I’m going on little sleep here but if I can make it through the last part of this day…can hopefully go to bed early tonight and get a decent sleep. Want to get back to normal by next weekend so that I can make good use of possible beautiful Vancouver weather.
April 10, 2007 at 6:40 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
From the window of this coffee house I see the customers sitting outside, holding onto their cigarettes, people walking by, and the occasional bicyclist. Maybe 10% of people are celebrating the good weather (despite the gray-milk sky) by wearing shorts or skirts - exposing a substantial amount of bare skin. “Only in Canada…” I think, …”at this temperature”. Then I remember the past months of winter and the young high school girls in uniforms with skirts just long enough to avoid train-seat - skin contact. (I think?) Generally the two scenarios involve the same elements - people with exposed legs despite the air being cool. But the stories and interpretations are completely different. The girls do their kneehighs well while that old man in the khaki shorts and black runners should lose the white socks.
April 7, 2007 at 9:48 am · Filed under Thinking
It is good friday - a good friday. I slept in and decided not to worry about things today. I went to Calhoun’s to work instead of the lab because it is a holiday after all. Also missed Vancouver coffee houses. There is something about Calhoun’s that I don’t like. Maybe that they cater but their food is still not that great. Maybe because they seem overly concerned with making money and when I sit in there I feel as though I am being “priveleged”. But the large space and coffee the size of my head wins me over.
Afterwards my plan was to go to the lab but in front of the bus stop was another café offering free wireless: Kava - on W Broadway near Macdonald Street. A little stark in atmosphere for my tastes but the walls were a good colour and it is the type of place where, if you sit near the front window, you can feel as though you are taking advantage of a sunny day even if you are sitting inside.
I am not used to afternoon coffee and I may have screwed myself out of a good sleep tonight but, besides being a bit wired, a feel really peaceful having been able to enjoy the places I was in today.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a place similar in comfort in Japan (not to say that there are not comfortable places there - just of a different form).
but
Is this because these places do not exist in Japan or because, given my background, I cannot find the same comfort and atmosphere in the Japanese equivalent?
Does someone from Japan sit in a Vancouver café and feel an atmosphere that they cannot find back home?
April 5, 2007 at 11:57 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
So of course the first restaurant that I eat at in Vancouver is Japanese. Not intended though. Last night I met Ali for coffee followed by dinner. We walked along W 4th debating our options. I wasn’t helping much with the decision making because I am always pretty bad at decided what I want to eat. Maybe Thai food? There was a new noodle place open - that could be good. We were on the Videomatica block when Ali noticed a restaurant with smaller windows and less flare than surrounding places. It was Japanase but was it just another sushi place? We went in and asked to look at the menu. They had yakimochi and I was sold. (yaki=baked or grilled, mochi=I talk about this already) I should have pictures but I don’t. Maybe next time cause I think I will go back to Zakkushi (website under construction but there are maps for their W 4th and Denman St locations). What did we eat?
fried soba noodle salad * yakimochi wrapped in pork * skewers of cherry tomatoes wrapped in pork * yakionigiri (grilled rice ball) * banana gyoza and ice cream
Without drinks it came out to $19.00 for the two of us. Seemed like a pretty good price to me as I left satisfied, the food was delicious, and the atmosphere good but reading some reviews - if you are into say, the 1lb of takeout for $5.00 from a University Village cafeteria restaurant - your tummy might not be so happy.
People in Vancouver…let’s go again before April 20th!
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