jeremyRose

me.

i simply am. it’s the only thing about me that’s simple.

i am a teacher. i am a writer. and i am a photographer. select a link above.

for more insight, read my blog...

two is the loneliest number. except for one, that is.

i wonder what it is about pairs that people find to be so satisfying.

no, i don’t wonder. i know. it’s physicality. but they say that it goes deeper than that.

and while i don’t believe them, i may as well attempt to see what it is that they keep telling me about. why is it that couples are so popular, while friendships die?

i remember a time when groups were the new alone. i moved from spending time with individuals to spending time with groups, large and small, until the wee hours of the mornings. it doesn’t feel particularly long ago. perhaps a few years. and then something happened.

it may be the location change.

humans are social beings. it’s no secret but that seems to find itself more interpretations than repetitions.

a few years ago, i made a temporary shift in my policy on formal relationships. i allowed myself to partake in the couple equation. it was a massive mistake, to say the least. that’s not to say that i didn’t truly care about her; far from it. i don’t hear from my first girlfriend anymore but i’d still be there for her if she ever needed it. we all have our regrets but caring for someone is pure and forever.

my mistake was neglect.

i forgot the basic principle of group proximity and neglected my friends, which seems to have convinced many of them that i simply don’t care. and that is patently untrue.

i vowed never to do it again and promptly found the person whom i will always consider my soulmate. what we had went far beyond the typical definition of a relationship, though. there was time for others and, while it was never enough group activity for me, it worked.

but what is it that makes people want to be in pairs rather than in groups?

i don’t see the benefit.

we seem to have the ability to function in groups. is it that we get tired of having people around or is it that we get addicted to sex and forget that there is life beyond the twosome?

when i lived in a small town, miles from the city, people came to visit me spontaneously. when i asked why this was so infrequent, the answer was always the same. i lived in a small town, miles from the city. and there was no public transit. not to mention that people got summarily lost every time they ended up trying to visit.

so i decided to fix that. when i moved to vancouver, i found myself a lovely flat in east downtown, right on an express bus route and dead-center in a city that is the size of a postage stamp and walking-friendly.

and i think the amount of spontaneous visits is at an all-time low. but at least people don’t complain about me living far outside the city, anymore. i suppose that’s a plus.

there are all kinds of things that one can do alone, though, so i shan’t complain.

plus, when my friends get particularly concerned about me, they don’t so much visit and do things. i simply end up in hospital.

ah yes. two might be lonely. but one, at least, is safe.

kids nowadays.

let’s talk for a moment about bullying and video games. i have strong feelings about video games, mostly because i have spent most of my life in an industry where i have participated both in the development of them and in their promotion. so i’ve been there in meetings where we have discussed what sells, what works, what hooks, and who the target audience is. how much violence is enough, too much, acceptable to parents, desirable to teens, to kids? how can we make violence seem better to parents? aliens? monsters? if it’s not a human, can we get more parents to buy their kids the game?

but those meetings are mild compared to the ones that i don’t get to be in — the meetings with the psychologists and psychiatrists and researchers. they called those “directional” meetings. i called them “pavlov” meetings. i know that behaviorism is a bit of a past-tense yet present-tense issue in education but it’s definitely the way things work in game development in the very-present and very-future sense. if you think for a moment that game companies think of a game as an independent release, then you’re missing the big picture. the idea is to train the audience, by the release of one game, to feel an inherent need for the next one. and then the next one. to make the game player angry enough, sad enough, violent enough, or anything else enough, to feel like buying the next game is not an option but a necessity. and that includes everything from blood splatter patterns and maps to console compatibility, graphics quality, and the strategic insertion of bugs to delay gratification and increase anger at key moments of gameplay.

that’s just clarification, though, before i actually talk about what i said i was going to talk about. video games are both the best thing and the worst thing to happen to youth. and i really mean that in the most extreme way. we talk about the bad side of gaming a lot. i will, too. but first, the good. (we’re doing these out of order. first the ugly, then the good, then the bad. it feels like a seminar on aesthetics.)

video games increase hand-eye coordination, spatial reasoning, physical movement coordination, fine motor skills, and computer familiarity. they give a way to release stress (even though they often create more, in the process) and participate in a group environment without any of the fear associated with actual group environments. and a child who is playing a video game isn’t watching television. some of the highest brain functioning levels are present when games are being played, while the lowest tend to follow the tube-oriented babysitter’s illumination. that’s only the beginning. they develop an understanding of complex social environments, the concept of racial diversity, the value of teamwork, organizational skills, strategic thinking, and delayed gratification. and they give the best possible introduction to the mathematical skills of spatial approximation, graphical reasoning, and logic. not to mention the ability to read information quickly, process it, and apply it in a meaningful way.

gaming is starting to sound a lot like another activity that children often engage in, isn’t it? school.

but when you engage in physical violence in school, someone gets hurt. and then someone goes to juvenile detention. or prison.

of course there are bad things about video games. many are violent. they can develop problems like rsi and contribute to non-linear reading issues. video games are blamed for an inability to deal with precise numbers and a favoring of approximative methods and a functional incapacity to grasp basic differentiation without unlearning a variety of graphical routines. but does this bad side of video games, combined with the ugly industrial complex from above, solidify enough of a link to violent tendencies in schools to be harsh with the games, rather than with the students?

in a word, no. never. not in the least.

i’m not a gamer. i’ve never been a gamer. i have played video games, yes, but not frequently or for long periods of time. i get bored more easily with things on-screen than i ever have with the real world. and that’s saying something, indeed. but many of my friends are and they are not particularly violent people, to say the least. often they are the most passive of individuals that you will ever meet.

but that’s not scientific research. i don’t like violent people. so i wouldn’t befriend the violent gamers, anyway.

what i can tell you is this — violence is human nature. no, not just for boys or even just for the youth. if you want examples of this, simply look through history. what is history? it’s frequent and lengthy wars, between nations, between tribes, between individuals, punctuated by brief periods of theoretical peace. war aside, we watch hockey for the fights, american football for the bloodshed, and employ bouncers at every public house to intervene, not if there’s a fight, but when it occurs.

if you think that humans are not vengeful, mindless animals, looking for a fight and only remaining socially acceptable most of the time because of laws, then i applaud you, since that means that you are likely in the minority for whom violence is reprehensible, without the motivation of the boys in blue. welcome to my world.

but that’s not the norm, i can assure you.

society is not a choice; it is an absolute, a definite, a necessity. when you are born, you are already in society. by the time you can choose to leave it, it has already affected you more than you could possibly know. and society is violent.

so you have either successfully fought against this violence and won. or you have given in.

what about students, though?

let me tell you a story. i went to a middle school where violence was not only a way of life, it was a way of survival. it was both random and targeted. it was a somewhat rural school with the attitude that “kids will be kids” and it was simply enough to get through the day. students lit fires in classrooms, came to school higher than the majority of people that you see on the downtown east side, attempted to explode devices on busses, and attacked both the weak and the strong. it was torture. the school had a name but i thought of it as “sixth ring of hell middle school”.

and i wasn’t alone.

but these were not gamers. not only was this happening in the era of king’s quest and mario, most of these people wouldn’t have known a computer if it walked over, introduced itself, and sat on their heads. repeatedly.

so what was the problem? broken homes? alcohol abuse by the parents? family conditioning?

no. most of these people had lovely parents. they came from stable homes. most were not particularly poor. there were some on the extremes of the ses scale but that was a vast minority.

from whence cometh the violence, then?

expectations.

we play the expectations game with our students all the time. and this is the result. it can go very wrong. assume that they will degenerate into animals and then watch how it happens. youth are a self-fulfilling prophesy.

the moral of the story?

there are two. first, don’t apply to teach at a middle school in foxtrap, newfoundland. second, expect your students to behave like adults. the kind of adults that they should want to be. ones who don’t fight, don’t vandalize, don’t hurt people. and don’t take no for an answer.

standup.

this is not about comedy. it’s about friendship. as are most of my discussions, lately.

yesterday, i had a rather depressing encounter with a very close friend. no, she wasn’t the source of my depression. it was her friends.

you all know how much i hate dirty restaurants. food frightens me to no end but it’s overwhelming in a place that holds itself under the banner of “fast food”. i would much rather live next to an explosives laboratory than to a location wherein items of vague edibility are placed in hot substances, coated, and then served in paper packages to herds of youth.

i digress.

when i got a call from my friend, she invited me to one of these places and said that she was going to meet her friends there. i thought to myself several things. i wanted to see my friend. i didn’t want to be in this place. i don’t really know her friends and i’d like to meet them. they’re not going to show up, are they? ah. we have hit the point of the thoughts.

i had a feeling that they would disappear and that my friend would be sitting, all alone, in a terrible place, wondering why she wasn’t worth enough to her friends for them to show up and eat with her.

she’s not a flaky person. but anyone would start to wonder if a whole group of people simply didn’t bother to arrive at a restaurant with you. alone is bad.

so, of course, i went. not to eat, mind you. but that’s a story for another day.

it took me ages to get there. the police were blockading my neighborhood, curiously enough. i think there was a gas leak that needed to be repaired. and on top of that, traffic was mindnumbingly painful on the kingsway. but i made it. as she was finishing. which gave me cause for a lot of thought, since then, about what one can and cannot do to one’s friends.

i don’t like alone. being with one other person is nice, of course, but i’m a group animal. i love doing things in packs. but alone is bad and the rest, i shall cover later.

i have noticed a trend in this city, since i moved here, that people commit to things and then back out. often without telling anyone. my friend in the restaurant is very, very forgiving about these things. i am not. i don’t like to see people hurt that i care about. i think it’s bad. and when friends do this to you over and over again, it certainly necessitates the question — are they really your friends?

not to misunderstand me here, of course, dear reader. i’m not saying that you should question your friends if they call you and say that they have to stay late at work and can’t meet you somewhere. or if they text-message you at the last minute and cancel because their mother is ill. that’s different. it’s when they simply don’t tell you. over and over again. and have no real reason other than that they don’t want to. are these the kind of people that you are going to continue to trust?

there you have it. my rant.

i trust my friends. if they’re going to do something with me, that’s great. if they’re not, i expect that they’ll tell me. and they do. and that’s perfectly fine. what do you expect?

for the love of cartoons.

i just finished writing the most ridiculous final exam of my life. half an hour ago, i walked out of a room with an examination paper completed, both depressed and confused. and that’s not how i usually leave exams. you likely don’t, either. excitement, happiness, joy, satisfaction, relief. these are post-examination sentiments that i can understand.

so what was so wrong with these particular examinations?

cartoons.

now, as many of you know, i have nothing against the great art of the graphic novel. i must not be seen to be criticizing a type of literature for which i have incredible respect. authors like hergé, spiegelman, goscinny, and satrapi have written some of the most brilliant works of literature that i have ever encountered.

i don’t like political cartoons. especially social-oriented ones. i don’t think they’re funny. but if you do, that’s fine. i don’t think they should be banned; i just don’t like them. i don’t read the sports section, either. or the local news, for that matter.

but there’s a vast gulf of theoretical liquid that spans the distance between what is kosher for a public newspaper and what makes a valid examination question for university students. i was going to say, especially university students who have finished at least one degree already. but that’s not the case. i strongly believe that this is true for undergraduates and high school students, too. valid examinations are valid examinations.

let me postulate a theoretical examination. i shall imply but not confirm that this was the examination that i just wrote, since that would be improper. at least, it would improper until i receive a grade.

you are given a short piece of paper that says that you must evaluate one of the images in the enclosed package with relation to the course material. and you must relate it to at least two topics in the course. and you must use references to research materials, scholarly articles, and so forth, to do this. and the enclosed package is a series of political cartoons.

there are many problems with this. i don’t know about you, dear reader, but i don’t understand political cartoons, for the most part. this is not a lack of understanding of the material in the course, which is not in any way cartoon-related. it is simply that i don’t read them and, therefore, do not have a grasp on how they work. being asked to figure out a whole new sign-signified structure before writing a final examination is not only unfair, it is invalid.

that’s not the whole of it, though.

political cartoons have a motive. they talk about something. they address a particular issue in a strong, usually satirical way.

the point of this is that it doesn’t address two issues. ever. i mean, almost ever. but really, for all intents and purposes, the whole point of the political cartoon is undermined by dealing with more than one issue. so if it does that, it’s already a failure. and that’s even before it makes its way onto an examination.

there’s more, though.

being asked to deal with research and articles is also invalid.

the point of a university course is information processing. in a course, like the one that i wrote an exam in today, where the focus is on taking theoretical material and applying it in context, the examination should reflect this. a context should be given and an explanation required as to how to apply the theoretical information, in practice.

the only valid examination is one that requires the task that the course was meant to teach, to be enacted, or at least contemplated on paper.

so these cartoons. they’re incomprehensible. they’re irrelevant. the style is painful to contemplate. and the exam is unrelated to the course’s purpose.

welcome to my world, dear reader. enjoy the view.

the expectations game. or, to mail or not to mail.

the theory of expectations goes something like this. if i expect more, you will be more motivated. and then you will succeed at a higher level. it works in school. it really does. if i expect my grade nine students to perform like grade twelve students, they might not quite get there. but they will likely perform better than if i only expect them to work at a grade nine level. it’s not one-hundred-percent effective. but it’s a good general strategy.

aim high.

it’s ironic that an institution where actually hitting the target is the one with that particular slogan. but it could certainly explain the problems that we western nations seem to be having in combat lately if that’s how our military thinks about it. i digress, however.

why doesn’t it work with the government, though?

expectations are high. actually, i misspeak. expectations are criminally low. and yet we still can’t seem to have them met.

with all of the problems in the canadian government, it’s quite representative of the issue. the canadian government pretty-much disappears. and nothing changes. what does that really mean? what were they doing there before? water still flows from the taps, cars still drive on the roads, doctors cure people (trust me, it happens, on occasion, although i can’t tell you when or where), and mothers give birth. government? what government? we expect nothing from them and they don’t even live up to that expectation.

but this is not a political commentary. okay, it is. but it’s a fuzzy one and i’m not going to bore you, poor reader, with details on the uselessness of democratic government.

it implies that people are rational. and intelligent. and motivated. and interested. and even if you, unlike me, believe that any of these are true, democracy only has a chance of working when they are all true, all the time, for all people. and even then, there is only a chance.

so it doesn’t work. as we can see here. and everywhere else that there is a democracy.

meltdown in the uk, riots in spain, racial violence in france, germans in germany. ok, maybe not the last one. but you get the idea.

but simple tasks work, right?

no.

what about mail?

it simply doesn’t work. i mail a letter and it takes forever-and-a-day to travel across only my own country. i mail a package. it’s in an envelope labeled overnight express. it takes five days. five. not two. two i could allow, if they give me a refund, since that’s a simple mistake. five days is gross incompetence.

my mother recently sent me a package from the east coast. it was mailed over-night on monday. on tuesday, i was excited to receive the contents. on wednesday, the contents were useless. on thursday, i called the post-office and received exactly no information. on friday afternoon, the package notification will likely arrive. late enough that i won’t get to the post office to pick it up. i will receive the package on monday. seven days after it was mailed. if it had been a seven-day delivery guarantee, that would be perfectly reasonable. but i needed the contents on tuesday. it’s not the end of the world. but it’s certainly an example of expectations going awry.

the postal service should give you two options. “next flight” or “by tomorrow”. those should be the only options. anywhere in the world. why this is not the case is public ambivalence. people don’t care. so it’s not done. our national airline, which is completely inept, can provide this service without any problem. so why not our national government?

i propose a solution to the expectations game, then.

incentive.

we’ll just use the mail issue as an example but i believe that this would work for all government services.

let’s say you mail a package today to be delivered tomorrow. it costs $50. tomorrow it arrives. excellent.

if it doesn’t arrive until the day after tomorrow, you get your $50 back. that’s how it is supposed to work now.

it doesn’t.

let’s add another incentive. for every day that the package is late, you get added refund, on top of your original price.

some people say that it should be (number of days late) * (total cost of mailing).

i disagree.

that’s not an incentive to correct the problem at any cost.

let’s try this one, instead — (total cost of mailing) ^ (number of days late).

successful service would mean that everyone is happy. the next day would be $0 cost to the shipper ($50 back). the next day would be a refund of $2 500. the day after, it would be $125 000. now tell me that this wouldn’t solve the problem in a hurry.

of course it’s unreasonable. that’s the point. it’s unreasonable that you would pay for a service that you would expect to be exactly as stated by any private business but, because it’s the government, you let it slide. over and over again.

let’s increase expectations and treat our government services the same way that we treat our grade nine students for a change.

private parts.

these last few days have been a whirlwind session on personal privacy. i’ve always had issues with the way that both governments and people think about personal privacy but i have now been thrown into a situation where it’s no longer theoretical. that’s always the test of theoretical conviction — when things become real, are you prepared to place currency next to lips, or so the saying should go.

my answer is yes.

we all have things to hide. it’s the nature of living a life that extends beyond the bubble of personal space. we interact with people. differently. by the sheer fact of living in a society where privacy is implicit, we avail ourselves of its protection. and that might be a good thing, in social settings. but this has become an epidemic of personal privacy concerns. let’s take a look at some of the more silly ways that people want their privacy to be protected, first, and then move on to the more serious issues.

the talisman for personal privacy idiocy is the internet. it’s a jungle out there. or at least a rainforest. where all you have to do to get wet is stand under the right leaf and wait for the downpour. we all know what the internet is, but why is it different? let’s start at the beginning.

in the beginning, there was the rag. cheap paper holding cheaper stories written by sufficiently inexpensive writers that their souls were valued in the half-penny region. but things were looking up. professional journalism was to come to the rescue. and destroy the whole industry. then rebuild it into advertising in the guise of information provision. which was dastardly. and brilliant. i only somewhat disapprove. and only then because i don’t like rewarding effort for effort’s sake.

real media began with the wireless. the radio. broadcast media at its finest. radio is like urinating in a stream. i won’t explain that but you get the idea. think kiddy-pool.

then came television. same principle.

and then there was none. the internet. ground zero for broadcast media. even with the meteoric rise of television and radio that has yet to be overturned, the web brutalized the concept of information provision and turned it on its head. i call it metabroadcasting. you can call it whatever you like. but the result is quite simple. now everyone is urinating in the stream. and it’s a river.

so what’s wrong with that?

inherently, the problem is that most people don’t know what they’re talking about but write about it anyway. but that’s the problem inherent in newspapers, radio, and television, too. we just try to avoid it. in theory (which is rarely how things work in reality), we watch the shows and listen to the programs and read the articles of those people who do their job well. the fact that none of them do their job well has skewed the results. but that’s a talk for another day.

but media is now interactive. what i watch on television, in theory, is my own personal business. if i happen to want to have a television simply for the purposes of late-night german pornography, my neighbor doesn’t know. my boss doesn’t know. my government doesn’t know. unless they bug my house. in fact, they can all find out, since television isn’t as broadcast-only as people think, but also not today’s topic. the image of anonymity is there and that’s good enough for society. remember, dear reader, image is everything.

interactivity means papertrail. theoretical papertrail, in most cases. but it’s a good way of thinking about it. i request a page, the server knows. everything between me and the server knows. and it knows who i am, where i live, and what else i’m looking at. and that frightens people.

now we’ve gotten to the silly part.

if you know what i look at, you know what i like. therefore you can show me things that i like and avoid things that i don’t. we call this a recommendation model. it’s complicated to implement. very complicated. nobody does it well. but that’s because they have to fight a losing battle on the information side of things. people are so private about their information that there’s nothing to use. so we get ads for pornographic sites and emails about genital enlargement and adopting bunnies from outer mongolia.

and what’s the downside to this information being public-domain? my neighbors might find out that i have a secret appreciation for soft rock. or that i like browsing through old newspaper archives. or that i prefer to buy my socks online, rather than go to the local gap. in other words, there’s no measurable downside to this. silliness is only the beginning.

people in today’s society have been indoctrinated into thinking that privacy is good. it’s not. openness is good. it avoids misunderstandings. and helps with only having one sort through things that are likely pleasant, rather than unrelated.

but yet everyone complains when privacy is overturned in favor of information availability.

that’s a minimal example, though.

what about when it really counts?

of course we have things to hide. medical records, encounters with the police as a child, perhaps something more serious. but think about your hidden secrets and then compare them to what might be true about others that you see regularly, irregularly, encounter your children on the streets, and so forth.

what would you give up for safety?

i shall leave you with this. i want to know everything about me. i don’t want anyone to have information about my life that i don’t have. and if that means that everyone else has it, too, so be it. and the same goes for everyone else.

safety comes from knowing. and i don’t have anything to hide that’s worth the risk. do you?

class tastiness.

empathy is tasty. especially to students.

this was the answer to one of my in-class questions. i got a lot of confused looks. shocked ones, too. not unusual. yes, i know my speaking style is painfully different from the norm. i don’t think that’s bad. there’s a reason that i get published. some people love my writing, some people hate it. i’m ok with that.

speech is the same.

if you’re curious what it feels like to me to speak english on a regular basis, watch this.

that being said, what i want to talk about is the concept.

empathy is tasty.

what i mean by this is that there is no complicated way to motivate students. it’s not rocket science. since students really enjoy rocket science, as a general rule, that’s definitely an unrelated point at the best of times. but it is not difficult. there is one. yes. one. way to motivate students. caring. that’s it.

if you want students to do better in class, to take an interest in what they are being taught, it’s not enough to help them. you have to want them to succeed. if you are prepared to give each of your students five minutes after class, if they want it, they will understand that. and understand that you’re only prepared to give them five minutes. and they won’t come.

if you’re prepared to do whatever it takes to help each and every student to succeed, stay after school for hours to help, they will understand that, too. then they’ll come to you for help. you won’t have to stay for hours. almost never, at least. usually only a few students and only for a few minutes, here and there. but if you’re willing to go the distance for them, they’re willing to work for you. and work hard.

so there you go. like i said. tasty.

be prepared to do whatever is best for your students and they will perform beyond your wildest expectations. simplicity is good. and that tastes good, too.

truth’s overrated. but underdelivered.

truth. it’s such a strange concept. what does it mean to tell someone the truth?

i’m not hung-up on telling everyone the truth. i mean, the whole truth in every moment. i don’t think it’s really important to tell someone that i don’t know very well that i don’t think her shoes look good. or that her shirt makes her look like a cross between a water-buffalo and a drunken giraffe. or that the lecture was mindlessly boring. some things are better left unsaid.

but i do have an issue with the way that people in general think about truth. and that’s truth with friends.

when it comes to people that you trust, care about, believe in, and are close to, truth is everything. it is the basis for thought, for trust, and for friendship. and that doesn’t seem to be something that is well-understood.

i shall try to be a little more enlightening.

i’m ok with people saying anything about me. it makes little difference. it’s not like i can stop them, anyway. they are free. it’s not that it doesn’t bother me when someone says something hurtful; it’s just that i have learned to live with it.

what do i really mind, then? secrecy.

people talking about me in ways that they won’t talk to me.

like i said to a very close friend a few weeks ago, you can write anything you like about me. as long as i get to read it.

your life is your own. what you do with it is not my business. if you want to share that with me, i’m good with that, too. but you don’t have to. i’ll help you when you want and leave you alone when you don’t. not only do i not need to know the details of your private life; i’m genuinely uninterested, for the most part, until it’s something that you think i should participate in.

but then there’s my life.

that’s different.

i don’t care whether you think it will hurt me, make me angry, distress me, or ruin our friendship. i need to know everything. always. no exceptions.

and i know that’s not the way things work with other people. they like to be protected, sheltered, given the benefit of the doubt.

i expect only two things from my friends. yesterday’s discussion covered one of them — i expect to be asked for help whenever possible. and i expect the truth about my life, in detail, every piece, instantly.

in return, though, they get a fairly good deal. honesty, devotion, guaranteed assistance, and unlimited caring. plus chocolate desserts on demand.

what do you think about truth? how much do you expect from your friends?

the joy of editing, the agony of… editing.

photography is not like it was twenty years ago. or five. or one.

there used to be one piece to photography and now there are two. and the old part is the easy one.

film is not a simple concept. you can’t do trial-and-error. it doesn’t work. it’s expensive to buy, time-consuming to develop, and completely unrepeatable.  but we live in a digital world now. all photographers should have switched by now. i was a late-switcher. i wanted to wait until they had really figured it out. but the technology has arrived. my nikon d80 is unquestionably better than every film camera ever made. yes. all of them. including the expensive ones. don’t ask if i’m serious. i am.

so digital is the new film. and the new black.

what does that mean?

it means better pictures. simply put, it adds a huge amount of work to replace the part that got removed.

taking the picture, loading the film, developing the film, modifying the negative, processing, storage, etc. it’s all one step now and it’s instant. right now. there you go. done.

what do you do, then? you take more pictures. hundreds more. thousands, even. pictures of everything. from every angle. often many of each. bright, dark, far, near, underexposed, overexposed. but that means that you have to do something else.

editing.

yes, it’s my nightmare. also my joy.

photographers who say that you can take a picture from the camera and send it out for printing or display have missed the point. taking the picture is easy like it never was before. now you can make it better. and who doesn’t want better pictures?

i’m not going to give you a tutorial in how to edit pictures effectively.

unless you happen to want one. in which case, you know how to find me.

but i’m just going to say this. get over the instant-art thing. it’s a myth.

editing is the new developing. and the new green. and red, for that matter. since we have to do something with those safe-lights.

oh yes. and here’s my shameless plug for aperture. it’s my savior-minus-the-wood, let’s say.

happy shooting.

any (air)port in a storm.

airports are lovely places. since i was just at one, i thought i’d reflect on why i enjoy them so much.

i spend a fairly large amount of time in airports, not only for traveling but for personal enjoyment. and i get told, from time to time, that spending time in airports is dangerous. because the security will think that i am mapping out the place for an attack or searching for security weaknesses. i would like to think that airport security has better things to do than to watch me. since you all know that i’m no threat to airports, airplanes, or people of any sort. except a linguistic threat. but that’s of no concern to the airports.

i find that being able to get places quickly makes me feel free. cars are a start. busses don’t do it for me. trains feel slow. at least, in canada they do. since they move at about the same pace as an unmotivated garden slug. with a drinking problem.

but airplanes make me feel free. don’t get me wrong, i’m not a control-oriented individual for nothing. if they’d let me fly the plane, i’d be far, far happier. and i would jump at the chance. every time. but i shall pretend that i’m ok with being a passenger in favor of blatantly quick arrivals.

airports are the gateway to the world. so i feel comfortable when life seems like it’s trapping me, leaving my house and going to the place that is the first step to anywhere else gives me a sense of directional options. and that’s a good thing.

so, you ask, what was i doing at the airport at a time for me to come and write this just before 0530? ah, that’s a long story involving friendship, helpfulness, communication failure, and lack of concern.

i assume that my friends will ask me for help. if they don’t, then they’re not really my friends. if they feel that they’re a burden to me, that they can’t ask things because it’s not right, or that it doesn’t give me every ounce of purpose that i have in my life simply to be asked to help my friends, then they don’t understand me and it’s not worth the explanation. simply put, i want to be asked for help. not by people who don’t want help, of course. but by those people who think, “i’d like help with this”. they simply need to move beyond the, “i can’t ask him because he’s too [busy/tired/overworked/uninterested/etc...]” stage. but my friends seem to have grasped this concept. and so i was asked to come to the airport to do one of the usual pickup runs.

my friend’s flight was delayed. a lot. no problem for me, of course, since i can’t even remember how to spell the word “sleep”. instead of 1am, the flight was due to arrive just after 3. like i said, i don’t mind. so i drove down there to the beautiful mosque that is yvr.

and the flight arrived, approximately when it was expected.

and then she wasn’t on it. panic struck me. and everyone else that i told.

but we eventually tracked down that she was going to be on the next flight that arrived in the morning. my mistake.

apparently i was supposed to be told this but things get lost all the time. i’m not bothered. any excuse to go to the airport in the middle of the night is counted as a good thing in my books.

at least she didn’t tell me not to bother to come back, because it was too much trouble.

so now i wait and go back a little later. i’m so happy to be asked. it almost feels like i’ve been asked twice now, so that’s a positive thing.

and i get to go climbing today. it’s going to be a good day.

always open to more climbing partners, by the way. just a thought.

week’ness.

this one has every possibility of being very short. they say, some days, you’re the bug, some days, you’re the windshield? i only have one question. the implication is that you actually get to be the windshield sometimes. when?

don’t get me wrong. i’m not giving up. not in the least. but i’ve been doing some thinking and i have a wide variety of thoughts for commentary. the first thought is snow. i moved to the west coast to attempt to avoid the pain caused to me by cold weather — in particular, the white variety of cold weather. unfortunately, it came in my carry-on. snow has infected vancouver for the last month or so. people tell me that i’m from the east coast, that i should be used to it, and that i should enjoy it, feel like i’m at home, and such things as that.

so let’s clear up some misconceptions about people who live on the east coast.

firstly, most of them don’t like snow. it’s an inevitability but that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant. they stay inside, hoard shovels, pay vast amounts of money to have their driveways cleared, and drive cars with chains. sometimes, at least. i’ve never tried the chain thing. but i’m pretty good at snow and ice, as long as the city puts sand on the ground.

they’re not all stupid. they’re not all fishermen. they’re not all unemployed. and they’re not all lazy.

no, that’s not the misconception.

most of them really are. and west-coasters think they’re cute, industrious, countryfolk, dealt a bad hand in life and requiring pity.

not quite.

i’m only an east-coaster by location. i have no connection to the place and i don’t feel at home when it snows, rains, freezes, or smells like salt here. although i have a soft spot in my heart for salt.

i believe they call that a cholesterol problem.

simply to make a comparison, when related to vancouverites, st john’s residents (otherwise known as townies) are (and this is a generalization to which i personally know several dozen exceptions) hyper-religious, lazy, mindless, sanctimonious, government-supported, insular, xenophobic, and uneducated. i don’t mean to be harsh. i really don’t. that’s just the norm. and i know atheistic, motivated, brilliant, self-aware, work-driven, informed, open-minded graduates in that place. but there’s a name for those people.

actually, there are two.

in general, we call those “exceptions”.

i call those people “friends”.

sometimes i miss the east.

sticking it to my friends. or, the game’s a’foot.

this week, i discovered several things. the extreme usefulness of pillows. the joy of a solid grip on your friend’s stick. (say that five times fast). the fact that my car doesn’t have interior lighting that can be operated by a switch. among others.

so i have many friends. few of them can drive a manual car. this is sad. i have made it my mission, among others, to remedy this situation. the solution requires time, pillows, and easy personal amusement. without these three, driving instruction is a disaster. with them, it is one of the most fun things that you can do. and only one kerb was mutilated in the process. shhh. don’t tell anyone with the richmond road services.

that’s a good point. the way people drive in richmond, kerbs are an endangered species, high on the persecuted objects list.

so we went to the mall. at midnight. in the parking lot. and drove around in circles for a few hours. and i found out several things. driving a car with a turbo is a fun spectator sport. you can be not particularly short but still unable to drive a scandanavian car built for amazons and the decendents of thor without the use of supporting materials of a relatively thick variety. she’s not all that much shorter than i am. must be something in the car. i think it’s sexist. doesn’t like female drivers. or pillows. is there a connection there? i shan’t say anything. it would be bad and unwise for family consumption. but i can imply. that’s safe. look down.

so here’s the sum of my contributed knowledge from this encounter. how to drive a standard in several short steps.

if you take your eyes off the road, you will hit something. likely something inanimate. it will hurt. this is bad.

start with your foot on the brake. if it is not there, you will roll. and hit something. also hurting is possible here. note. bad. well done.

the throttle is your friend. nuzzle it gently. stomp on it hard. don’t forget about it. it will eat you. and your children. even if you don’t have any yet. it’s fickle like that.

when you start, there is no relationship between a smooth takeoff and a smooth depression of the throttle. this is an urban myth. don’t believe it. it’s beyond stupid. it’s painful. almost like hitting something. which you’ll likely do, anyway. go figure. i like my tyres. ground clearance is my friend. more than i ever knew.

don’t touch the *insert expletive here* handbrake. it’s not there for you. once again — no handbrake. it’s for amusing escapades in powersliding. that’s it. no, it’s not for hills, starting, stopping, general fondling of inanimate objects, or inspection by functional attachment. congrats. you win at life.

the glovebox is not fundamental to driving. leave it alone. it will also eat you. with ketchup.

if you’re not having fun, you’re not moving fast enough. and it’s a parking lot. it should feel bloody fast. all the time. if not, you’re doing it wrong.

now you know how to drive. ok, maybe not. but we can pretend. take a bow. *shove*.

all tied up.

i’m a little out of practice. but i hear it’s hot. soldering, that is. and, yes indeed, i managed to burn myself. but only slightly. on my finger. pinky, in fact. and a cardboard box. but success is upon me. i have spent awhile in the land of hot lead, long strings of plastic, and the fine scent of burned paper byproduct. and somehow i also managed to get myself completely tangled in a power cable for a *insert shock here* dell. no, it wasn’t mine. i don’t do such scandalous things as to buy computers running windows or linux. it would offend my religion. really it would. ok, not my religion. but at least my sense of thought. dell is actually code. it’s latin for “the sixth ring of hell”. and you thought that was a certain professor’s lectures. no, indeed. that’s a different ring. i shan’t say which. imagination, i tell you. well done. you guessed it.

suffice it to say that i now have, in my hand, a magical box. it has black cables therein. and takes a seemingly meaningless hole in the wall and turns it into the lifeblood of a technological abomination known as a personal computer. go me. *insert curtsy here*.

that being said, this was simply as introduction to a class in which the necessity of doing such hotness-related things was created. everyone makes mistakes. especially with computers. in school, this tends to get worse, as people use unfamiliar equipment that belongs to other people. there’s no caretaker of your computer like yourself. oh, the joys of heavy, padded bags and touchy new-laptop-owners. the cable was broken. by accident. it was a terrible design. not really anyone’s fault. and the computer was completely wonky, for lack of a better word. but we survived. plentifully. and moved on with the class. that’s where it gets fun.

someone suggested that thought reflects language and another that language reflects thought. you know that object that derives from the rather rear-most portion of the male bovine? both qualify as similar to this particular excremental entity. blatantly so, even. when i pointed this out, it was not taken as being particularly helpful, though, only as confusing an already confusing issue. my bad. i shall put it simply for you here. language is thought. it just is. we think in language. we speak thought. there’s no language without thought and no thought without language. infants don’t think. they react. animals don’t think. ask fido what he thinks of the theory of proximal development. see if miss pussy has a deep-seated interest in discrete inequalities. or the rules of cricket. or even in crickets. the chirping kind. unless fido fundamentally floors you with a well-placed word, sentence, or even symbolic utterance and kitty does a little more than eat the cricket and nuzzle the calculus text, what we have is simple reactivity. that’s it. no more discussion. but it took an hour.

then we moved on to other things. like group projects. i’m lucky. i attract smart people. it’s a gift. they like me because i don’t make them stupid. stupid is contagious, you know. and endemic. this is canada, after all. so i get a partner who actually knows how to do work, is willing to do it, and has no issue with both speaking his mind and listening to me speak mine. wonderful. then i notice how many people have issues with actually getting together and deciding something. but that’s a topic for another day.

simplicity is decision put into practice. don’t forget that one. it’s more important than language being thought and infants being thoughtless. not that those aren’t important. next week, we solve the mystery of the ages. or at least talk about cheese. any questions?

the meaning of friend.

there are many things that are obvious in life. the sky is blue (unless you live in vancouver, in which case you can’t look up, since it’s raining, and the sky is actually striped orange and purple and nobody has noticed yet). water is good for you. the closer you get to a child, the more inane and silly your speech becomes. other things appear obvious but only after a certain point. it has taken me years to realize some of these things and this is an attempt to save you some time investment in one of them. “friend” means different things to different people. i wasn’t exactly shocked to figure that out. what absolutely floored me was the vast difference between what i understand that word to mean and what others hear when i say it.

what we’re talking about is friendship in a close way, not the many hundreds of acquaintances that we loosely use the term for. i’m going to ignore that secondary function for a moment and stick to the people who are very close to me.

friendship should be several things. one of which is permanent. lifelong. i don’t say that lightly. you can count on me today; you can count on me tomorrow; if you call me in 2062 and ask for my help, the answer is already yes. this is why lack of commitment bothers me so much. if you’re only transitory, you’re not really friends at all. i won’t run away and i expect that you won’t, either. good, bad, or otherwise, i’m not a conditional friend. which brings me to the second part of the equation. friends should be unconditional. call me at 4am and tell me that you need to talk. or that you need to get to kelowna by dawn. or that you’ve just broken up with your boyfriend and need to borrow my couch for a few days. or that you want me to come and give you a hug. in seattle. no worries.

forgiveness is hard. if it were easy, we’d give it to everyone. i know this is simplistic. if you, my friend, hurt me, i will forgive you. that doesn’t mean i’m going to forget. but i value friendship more than retribution, more than myself, really. that being said, if you want to hurt someone, they’re not likely your friend and this doesn’t really apply, does it?

trust is difficult, too. perhaps not for you but it certainly is for me. i don’t trust easily. ever. mother teresa walks in here and asks me to follow her blindly into the hallway and i have second thoughts. you get the idea. yes, even if she has the habit on. and wings. saints still wear wings, right? once i do, that’s it. you’re in. lately, i’ve been having an issue with this, though. this has been my formula for years and has stood me in good stead. my friends never lie to me. ever. i’m good at judging it but i simply trust that they care more about telling me the truth than about my possible reaction. and that guarantees me honesty, total and complete, every time. not so much, you say? you’d be right. i got complacent. comfortable. joyful, even, in my sanctimonious sensation of protection from the pain of dishonesty. and then i got hit in the back of the head with a metaphysical baseball bat. cricket club, perhaps? five iron. that’s the one. over and over and over again.

and i survived. and i still have my friends. trust is going to be hard to rebuild.

what were we talking about again? oh yes. there’s one thing more important than trust. and it’s not theoretical in the least. ok, it’s theoretical but not the way that i mean it. help.

no, i don’t mean you need to help me. help is what i’m getting at. the most important part of friendship is being there to help. all the time. yes, all the time. every time someone needs help, you give it. and it’s incumbent on them to ask. that’s the give-and-take part of things. i’m going to deal with this in another post but that’s the idea.

it’s been quite a few weeks for me. feel free to ask if you haven’t been in the loop but suffice it to say that i wouldn’t want to relive the month of december for any amount of money. but i wanted to reflect on what it means to have some of the most caring friends that i could ever hope for. and so i have.

spontaneity.

your shoelaces are untied.

they likely are, actually. you’re sitting at a computer, reading for pleasure. so you are most likely at home and your shoes have been discarded at the front door, consequently untied. and they say i’m not a rational person. ha.

as a teacher, i constantly have discussions about planning — in particular, lesson planning — with other teachers. it’s a dangerous topic, since many teachers live by the lesson book; many teachers live by the purloined lesson book, too, which i find to be a bothersome concept. i digress, however, and shall return to that in a moment.

nothing bothers me more in the classroom than rigidity, dogmatism, continuing a strategy that doesn’t work. public education is a strategy that doesn’t work, continued by other means. if von clausewitz were a high school student, that’s likely what the quote would have been. as a teacher, you are trusted with the task of, to state the obvious, teaching the students. that means that, at the end of the day, by whatever means necessary, the majority of the class should have more knowledge and more ability than at the beginning of the day — preferably in the subject area that you teach. (we will tackle the inappropriateness of subject division on a later day).

what people often forget, especially teachers, is that students are not computers, robots, or even, to be completely honest about it, rational, developed human beings. that’s not to say that they’re not people and should be treated badly. far from it. it simply means that you cannot predict anything beyond doubt. in particular, it means that you cannot plan with any degree of certainty. teaching is a long-term exercise in educated trial and error. and more often error than not. and, as a teacher, that is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. in fact, it’s something to strive for, to be proud of, and to be happy for, when it arrives. lewis carroll wrote once of thinking six impossible things — by breakfast. while i think this is an excellent model for teaching, i shall raise you one and say that you should have thought of six lessons destined to fail by lunchtime.

i know that sounds crazy. but i assure you that it is anything but that and everything in the interest of the students. if you do it right.

first, let’s talk about how to do it wrong. in vancouver, our days hold four classes. the traditional method of planning is as follows. before you arrive at the school (preferably several days before), you take your overviews, what we call unit plans, which are vague guidelines for how the whole subject is supposed to follow, and you come up with four (sometimes three, depending on breaks) eighty-minute classes. down to the minute. 0900. take attendance. 0903. stop taking attendance. 0904. inspect students’ eyes for illicit substance use. 0905. open textbook and issue reminder to listen quietly to chaucer. 0906. fall asleep while reading chaucer. you get the idea. while this is inherently boring and an extremely lengthy task, when done to the level that is required by the theoretical teaching instructions, this is not where the problem arises. other than facilitating the problem, that is. the problem is, the next day, when these lessons fall apart. which they do. if you don’t believe me, please try to remember your high school career. or your university one, for that matter. how many classes did you have every day? four? five? six? and how many of those classes did you walk out of thinking to yourself how much you learned, how much fun you had learning it, or how useful that will be. even in retrospect, how much of that time was well-spent? i would wager that it is a vast minority. how close am i to the truth? that is what happens when well-meaning teachers take the theory of teaching, write a plan, and then follow the plan, regardless of what happens.

i’m going to assume that you are with me. if not, that’s ok. but you can go back to the beginning and read again or move on to another post, since i’m simply going to presume that you’ve got it and agree.

what to do about it? nothing. yes, that’s right. i’m not saying don’t plan anything. that would be silly. unless you really can stand up in front of a few dozen students and engage them for five hours without preparation. which some of us can. but most teachers can’t and i don’t want to take away their crutches, only their symbolic couches. today, we’ll talk about chaucer. these are the three points that i want to deal with, in broad strokes. if it doesn’t work, we can move on to something else. good. planning complete. if you are spontaneous, you will have fun. the students will sense that and both have more fun themselves and learn more. you will be a success.

if you can’t do this, then you either need to work hard at it or find another profession. quickly.

you spend your life being a public figure to hundreds of young people. you are outgoing, generous, and knowledgeable. or you wouldn’t be here. please have some faith in your ability to work without a net. if you fall, you fall. if you’re going out on a limb for your students, they will catch you and you will climb higher next time.

may the force be with you.

carriage return.

vancouver is subtropical. now repeat that a thousand times and hope that your breath melts the snow and ice that is surrounding us, at the moment. on new year’s eve, i left my camera with some friends on the mountain near coquitlam, where i solidly got stuck, post-role-playing-game. so i went out to get it. and that was fantastic. reunited with my beautiful nikon, i was beyond pleased. and then i drove home.

that sounds so simple.

not so much.

i had to drop by the campus on the way to pick up some things before tomorrow and i brought some friends along for the ride, since they were destined for that area of town, anyway. and since public transit in vancouver is slightly worse than a middle-ages plumbing system, this was a benefit for everyone concerned. and i love driving.

we left. it was snowing lightly.

we got to vancouver. it was snowing heavily.

by the time we hit the kingsway, it was snowing, icing, raining, and everything else that could be thrown down from the heavens that is either cold or slippery.

that’s not a problem, think i to myself, since i lived in newfoundland, the world capital of snow, and i learned to drive in these conditions.

there is a difference, here. two, in fact. here, they do not sand the roads. ice is ice is ice is ice is ice is *insert crashing noise here*. i don’t know if this is religious aversion or simple stupidity. i’m not asking them to put sand on every road. i was on the main road. all the way. no sand. help. the other one is that people in this city have the driving talent of a deaf-blind orangutan. on speed. and likely some other illicit substance. and that’s in the summer. in the winter, things really fall apart. let me give you a few pieces of advice. when it snows, drive slowly. don’t use your brakes. don’t stop. ever. especially on hills. and, best of all, go home. right now. by public transit, if possible. and leave me alone. just a helpful hint.

but i made it.

and i am completely exhausted, so i shall now attempt to sleep. i shall be unsuccessful. but at least i shall live to fight another day. like tomorrow. when i shall have some real news for you. or at least a good story, in the meantime.

after these messages…

ta.

large holes in the earth.

lynn canyon is a marvelous place. i don’t exaggerate. it has to be one of my favorite locations anywhere to visit. i have taken almost everyone that i know there, who lives within any reasonable distance of the place. you have likely seen thousands of photographs that i have taken there. but i’ve never seen it like this before.

last week, i took my parents. it was covered in snow and ice. we got a few feet across the bridge — far enough for my father to take some breathtaking ice-and-snow-from-several-hundred-feet photographs — and turned back. but this week’s visit was more fulfilling, i must say. we arrived there a little late in the day but certainly well within sunlight hours.

you have experienced the suspension bridge. it’s precarious. meesh and i used to stand on the bridge and jump to frighten the passers-by. it was amusing. today, it was far more frightening to everyone. the whole bridge is solidly covered in ice. it’s fabu. i assure you, there is no more amusing winter passtime than sliding across a highly-strung suspension bridge, hovering above a rock canyon, unable to stop moving from the ice. enjoyment was had by one and other. perhaps not the other people on the bridge, but we were laughing incessantly.

on the other side, the snow was deep, the ice was slippery, and our boots were tested to the limits of their tread. and succeeded. pictures at dusk of the moon above the river were taken, climbing in near-darkness made me smile more than i have in ages.

the parking lot was a different story. took a half hour to get out of there. including a shovel. and some dogs. yes, dogs, i tell you. and sand, too. but the dogs looked better.

made it home, though. what a day.

exhausted.

more tomorrow.

sleep cometh with the dawn.

good morning, dear reader. i’m a little late, but that’s because it’s still friday, as far as i’m concerned. it’s almost morning and i am still wide, wide awake. that’s nothing new, i assure you, but tonight has been quite a time for me.

as you may already know, things have been both good and bad around here lately. one of my professors has decided that i am not good enough to continue in the education faculty and, as such, has decided to fail me in a required course. i have, of course, appealed this decision. the answer is still pending. christmas and new year’s have been tense, awaiting the result of whether i will, in fact, become a teacher or, conversely, be denied my only dream. i cannot speculate. i shall do that in a few days, once i have more information, post-resumption-of-class.

as a result, at least one of my very close friends, who knows how deeply i hold the ideal of being a teacher, became very frightened by the fact that it is falling apart before my eyes. more than one, i can guarantee. two, as a bare minimum. and almost two weeks ago, one of them informed the police, either directly or through the health services, that i was suicidal, resulting in what i would have to say was the most painful and frightening night of my life. i shall spare the general public the details but, just so you know, if you call the police and tell them that your friend is suicidal, please ensure that it is the case before doing so. they will come to that person’s house, drag them from it, handcuff them, bring them to hospital, and ensure that they are restrained for hours in a dangerous environment. it’s the law. i’m not saying that the police wanted to hurt me; far from it. they simply wanted to help. but i tell you again — do not do this lightly, as your friend may never forgive you for it.

in my case, i believe that friendship is the most important thing in life. if you are truly my friend, you will always be forgiven. i assure you, that is not an invitation to hurt me. if you want to hurt me, there is a good chance that you’re not my friend, anyway, so this doesn’t apply to you. and yes, indeed, i write papers this way, too.

i assume that this was done with the best of intentions. whomever was responsible for my subsequent pain and fear was simply trying to save my life. while i was not actually on the edge, about to kill myself, there was no way for them to be sure of that fact and i applaud the effort. for future reference, if i was ever to be in danger of killing myself imminently, which i do not predict to be the case, just so you know, i’d let you know. you wouldn’t have to guess. there’s something to this blatantness that i always get accused of that should come into play here.

that being said, it’s ok. it will take me a long time to recover from what happened, but it’s not the fault of anyone being malicious, only misguided. and that i can certainly forgive.

the first principle of friendship for me is trust. i believe that it is of paramount importance. i’m sure i will write more about this in the future, but let’s just leave it at that i think that it is vital for friends to tell each other everything of significance. that doesn’t mean that i need to know what time you got up in the morning today. or what you had for breakfast. or even who you slept with last night. what i’m getting at is that if it’s something that affects me, and you know it, and i don’t, you should tell me. and not when i ask. you should tell me when you realize that i don’t know and that i should. every time. and i don’t just mean this for me; i think this is the basic, fundamental truth for all friendship. if i know something that is important to you, i will tell you. immediately. you won’t have to pressure me, beat it out of me, beg, or ever wonder if i have told you everything. i have. period.

there’s a problem with this. ok, there are several. but the one that is important at the moment, early this morning, as dawn is creeping closer, is that i assume that all of my friends understand this. they don’t. i didn’t know that until a few hours ago. i have now discovered how the police were incited to come and take me away, temporarily. and i am displeased with the fact that it has taken almost two weeks for this information to be forthcoming. i don’t care why. and i’m not going to take anyone’s head off because of it. and i’m not going to throw away my friends because of it. but i am displeased. i trust my friends to the end of time; i don’t expect to be betrayed and i don’t expect to be lied to. my bad. i don’t know if i’m ever going to stop expecting it, now. but i can tell you that if i do, it will be a long time from now.

so you’ve had your daily dose of depressive friendship theory.

if you’re reading this at the moment, you either live a long way from here or you should be asleep. good night.

oh yes. tomorrow’s post shall be more uplifting. as if it could be anything else.

happy new year.

i made one new year’s resolution this year. reflection. reflection without a mirror, to be exact. every day, i have told myself that i am going to think about what happened that day, write about it, share about it. most significantly, though, think about it. but writing is a start.

let’s start at the very beginning. since it’s a family tradition to watch the sound of music on new year’s eve, every year, i figure this is a particularly appropriate way to begin.

two-thousand and eight was a particularly good and bad year. but things start before that. this will fall into the about category, yet i feel that i should put it here, simply for the sake of information. i am a writer, a photographer, and a consultant. i do all of those things at the same time. i take photographs and write for clients, for books, and for myself. but if you’re here, you likely already know this. the rest, you may not know.

the most important piece of background information is this — i am a teacher at heart. my parents are teachers. and like mother and father, like son. i could never imagine myself doing anything else. i am happy in front of a class. i assure you, i do not see the world of teaching through rose-colored glasses. i am even going to skip the typical rose-colored puns that follow from my name. i’ve been there. i know what it’s like. it’s not all good. but i love it more than life itself and i would never give up life as a teacher for anything in the world. yes, that’s sappy, sentimental, and emotional, three things that i detest. and that’s the only time that you will ever hear me become emotional about anything here. i’m not the most rational of people. but i assure you that i am anything but emotionally promiscuous.

i have been trying to become a full-time instructor for many years. since i was approximately four years old, to be precise. i wanted to be a teacher before that but it was around the age of four that i first put this thought solidly out into the world. i have never changed my mind. never even doubted it. so, once i graduated from high school, i thought that i was on my way to the life that my father led, the life that i always dreamed of and still do. university courses, both in the classes and in front of the classes, ensued. more than a decade of them. i have never really cared what i was teaching, as long as it was in english, to english-speaking students. and as often and for as long as possible. unions be damned, i want to teach longer hours for more days. and yes, if that makes me crazy, at least it’s my kind of crazy.

so i finally finished undergraduate school, graduate school, and moved on to a degree in education, which somehow is necessary to teach. i shall talk about that later, but we shall assume, for the moment, that this is all as it should be and move on to the rest of the story.

i’m all of the other things, too. but now i’m an education student at the university of british columbia. i graduate this year with a bachelor of education and a teaching certification and move on to teach english in a vancouver classroom. i hope.

in the last year, i have moved to vancouver. i have loved and been loved by a girl whom i shall miss for the rest of my life, who passed away in july and for whom i would give anything to have back, including my dream to teach; she is gone, though, and i am still here.

i have been accepted to the university that i would choose above any other in the country to attend and been given the opportunity to teach, temporarily, at vancouver technical secondary, an inner-city vancouver school, exactly what i dreamed of doing for the last twenty years. if i could spend the rest of my life doing that, i would be satisfied.

i have met many new friends. i say that with far more force than it feels to you. friendship for me is a sacred thing. it is a bond between people that can never be broken and flows vibrantly with trust, with openness, and with love. and i have made several new bonds, only one of which was shattered by death, and for this i can be thankful.

the new year is a time to be thankful and reflective. the tone of this entry is very different from that of the ones that will follow. at least, it is up to this point.

now for the story.

my parents came to visit me last week. they left this morning. i cannot tell you how sad i am about their departure. i don’t care how many dysfunctional families there are out there, where you all hate your parents and dread family events and the like. i wish my parents lived down the road. perhaps they will, at some point. but at the moment, my father teaches in a small middle-eastern country, qatar, so i don’t see my parents very often. i shall change that in the years to come, i hope, but for now it is the situation.

last night, i went to a party. the party was fun. as new year’s parties tend to be, it was late. and there were games. and great people. and it was on the mountain. my mistake. i drove to the party. it was nice when i left. it was relatively nice when i arrived. when i tried to leave for home, in the wee hours of the morning, nice wasn’t within driving distance, pardon the pun, of what it was.

before i get to that, i should mention to you the game munchkin. it’s hilarious. and fabu. at the same time. i lie not at all. if you have not, you need to play this game. with me, preferably.

having played this and other games, i left. got in my car. got a push to get started. and two hours later had traveled only a few feet. vancouver is famous for many things. it is not famous for snow-clearing. because there isn’t any here. which doesn’t bother me. i can tell you what does. they don’t believe in sand. they just don’t do it at all. sand belongs on slippery roads. here, sand belongs on beaches, they believe. so i didn’t get home, despite the efforts of some friends. and by efforts i mean torture. they absolutely killed themselves for a hugely long time trying to get me home so that i’d be there in the morning to take my parents to the airport.

a few hours later, i got home. almost six hours after i left. needless to say, i’m a little sleepy, at the moment. and my parents are gone. so that’s your story for the day.

oh yes. before i forget. capital letters bother me. i believe that they should be outlawed for many reasons. so you shan’t find any here. just so you know it’s not a glitch.

ta.

vancouver impressions

acquaintances. yes, the many people that we talk to on a semi-frequent basis, of which there are dozens, scores, even several. having lived in so many cities, i seem to have acquired a vast quantity of them and, while they are all distinct and individual, there seems to be one common thread. most of them have inhabited only one general location in their lives and are curious about such other locales — and, since my movement has been rather continual and sporadic (yes, those are contradictory but i shall leave it at that and assume that you know about what i am speaking), i am frequently interrogated on the relative merits of various and sundry (sundried?) cities and towns.

so i shall start with my current location and work my way through places, which i have inhabited. and some, which i have not but have visited frequently. no, this isn’t a ploy to get you to move to vancouver and keep me company. i’m quite blatant about telling you all to do that. this is more an excuse to write copiously so that i don’t forget what it’s like to live here, amongst the fog of daily life.

welcome to vancouver. i’m just going to give you the high and low points and you can take it from there. actually, i’m going to pair them up so that you can measure things for yourself. if you want to see pictures, you shall have to wait a little and see them either on my facebook profile or on my smugmug albums. preferably the latter, since the quality is oh-so-delicious there.

first of all, let’s get something quite straight. there’s vancouver the area and vancouver the city. these are not the same thing. i didn’t realize how different the family of cities was until i got here. not visited, actually began to live here. we shall take a look briefly at her partners in crime in a moment, but i shall start with the different locations and short descriptions, before i get to the actual talk of substance.

vancouver — the city itself, trapped in the middle, against the pacific ocean. in a word, wet. in another word, wet.

richmond — where i currently work, a lengthy drive from downtown vancouver, stuck between the real city, which it is not really attempting to be, and the american border, to the south. in a brief word, chinese. not that that’s a bad thing, of course, but it’s a hugely different experience from any other canadian city. it’s like beijing, except they take canadian dollars and you don’t need immunization to visit.

burnaby — the city of the mountain. well, they’re all cities of mountains, since we’re stuck between the rockies and whistler’s glorious snow-topped skiing paradise, but this one is actually on the mountain. sfu lives here, as does, er… nothing else, really. but it’s a beautiful and relaxing place where driving is easier and the forest comes to visit. in a word, trees. and more of them, even.

new westminster — think newark. without the high crime rate. a bedroom community nuzzling vancouver’s south-east boundaries like a chronically dependent child. there are houses there. they’re rather pricey by newfoundland standards. but cardboard boxes here are rather pricey by newfoundland standards. we drive through this city to get places if we don’t live there. and there are box-stores there, like the big ikea. and ikea makes everything worthwhile. the word? dishwater. (bland as, that is).

langley — it’s a place with grass, trees, and things that grow in, stand on, and consume on a regular basis, grass and trees. yes, that makes it sound like it’s our own in-house marijuana growth facility. it’s not. well, it could be. but that’s not what i’m getting at. there are farms there. like, legitimate farms with things that go moo on them. yes, they really do go moo. langley’s word is peaceful.

coquitlam — like langley but more mountains. really, more mountains. but the farms are much the same. the word? altitude-curious.

surrey — there are bad things that people say about surrey. i won’t repeat them. it seems like a lovely place to me. the people there, well, there’s a large variety of people there. and some of them are rather stereotypical fans of lynyrd skynyrd. with pickup trucks. but they’re not really in the majority and most of them are actually rather pleasant people, most of whom live there because they can’t be bothered with the vancouver lifestyle. surrey’s word is nice. in almost every way, it’s the middle-of-the-roadness that is typically associated with a small midwest town. except it’s neither small nor midwest nor town.

coquitlam is not really of note here and the further-out places, we will cover in a later message.

so, on to vancouver, point-by-point.

the driving is truly atrocious. i should get that out of the way. there is no other way to say this. the locals, in general, can’t drive. this is why. they don’t pay attention to what they are doing. when the average vancouverite drives, driving is seventh or eighth on the list of things to do. and that’s while the car is moving. when the car is stopped, say at a stop sign, a traffic light, or even behind a car that is making a left turn, it drops off the list entirely. and not until the car begins to move. it’s until the car hits 30mph again. so the initial start is completely without thought. it’s dangerous and aggrivating. i’ve never felt so afraid for my life in a car while only hitting a maximum of 10mph on many roads, before. that being said, the balancing point is that, when the other drivers aren’t around — say, at 5am, which is a lovely time to drive, anyway — the roads are fantastic. especially the ones up in the north (note, i didn’t talk about north and west vancouver in the list above. it’s because i really like them and i’m going to write a different post about that particular location, which is my likely new home, once i move, unless i end up teaching in burnaby, which would be altogether different and take up more space than i am willing to devote to a paranthetic addendum.) are truly beautiful. they are twisty, hilly, and other joyous adjectives that end in -y. and you can drive relatively quickly without fear of flipping your motor from badly maintained surfacing on a tight bend. even in downtown, the driving is great, except for the drivers. so my recommendation is to work close to home and drive at night for pleasure.

oh yes, and the price of fuel — it’s astonishingly bad. but that’s not just a local thing. note to canadian government — give it a rest with the petroleum taxation and let us get on with our days. it is not the fault of opec. you could fix this. i shall move on now.

housing is expensive. like, really expensive. living in downtown will cost you something just shy of black-market-elicit. it’s absolutely painful. the upside to this is that housing is much better quality in these places. an expensive apartment in st john’s will cost you much less, but you get much less. the quality just isn’t there. at least in this city, people demand quality construction, appliances, etc. and things simply work. i suppose you get what you pay for.

unless you live in kitsilano, that is. then you pay a fair amount and are likely to get a basement that is only six feet high and about as bright as the armpit of an average chimpanzee.

there are wonderful neighborhoods. yes, wonderful. yaletown is beautiful and upscale. gastown is beautiful and, er… not so upscale. across the river from yaletown is a lovely quiet area that feels very safe. and kitsilano is nice. yes, nice. out by the ubc campus is staggeringly beautiful. and impossible to get anywhere from, since it’s so far out there. but the ocean is nice. and so is the park. but it’s very expensive out there and it’s much easier simply to live downtown with the amenities and drive to campus. or anywhere else, for that matter. the other side of that is that bad neighborhoods are rather extreme in the other direction. go thou not to east hastings. or commercial drive.

ever.

yes, i mean it.

even if you’re big and strong. it’s not a violent area, per se. it’s all about drugs. and the biggest guy in the world’s still not going to want to take on a desperate heroin addict on the street. consider yourself forewarned.

produce is cheap. yes, really cheap. and it’s fantastic quality. for canada, in particular. the cost of food is very nice. unless we’re talking about specialty stuff. and i’m very much into the specialty foods, since my diet is rather non-wheat-oriented for reasons that i shan’t discuss here. that being said, it all comes out in the wash and food prices become relatively average and produce quality is definitely the best in the country. thou shalt be happy if thou eatest healthy foods here.

people are healthy here, in general. the locals are overweight, in general, in newfoundland. it’s just the way things are. if you walk down the street in downtown st john’s, the locals are, on average, blatantly consumption-oriented. walk around downtown vancouver and you will discover that people are healthy weights, in general. not everyone, but the vast majority. it’s because they exercise. obsessively. it’s warmer here and you can spend time outside, so that’s progress, too, but whatever the reason (and part of it is an absolute obsession with yoga and the like, from the pseudo-hippy new-age-yuppy mentality), they keep the weight under control.

the other side of that coin is that many things here feel fake. the healthiness is definitely an act in many ways. it’s not a result of eating well — it’s much more a result of eating badly then being overworked to the point of not having a snack. but at least it looks good.

salaries are much higher here. good point. yes, very good point. cost of living is absurdly high. housing is expensive beyond the point at which it would be painful to a reasonable person. fuel is absurdly pricey. but at least salaries are high to match.

and there’s an obsession with the technology industry. yes, i work in the technology industry. as does just about everyone else in this city, unless they’re on the film crew for battlestar galactica.

oh yes, they film just about everything here. walk around vancouver for an hour and you’ll start to recognize scenes from your favorite television shows and films. we’re cheap, close to the american border, and have no distinguishing marks in our cityscape. a filmmaker’s dream come true. and, yes, it’s our tax dollars at work. i’m not bitter.

beyond that, we get to the weather.

people complain about the weather here a lot.

yes, a lot.

more than in newfoundland, if you could believe that. and i didn’t, until i moved here.

yes, it’s wet. and overcast. almost all the time. and seasonably-cold seems to be a frequent state of mind.

but it’s warmer than the east, continually. and it gets sunny on occasion. and i’d much prefer wetness to snow. one doesn’t have to shovel rain. and the drainage system here is second-to-none. flooding is unusual and that’s quite a feat with all this water falling.

we have beautiful sunny days and not just in the summertime. it’s a photographer’s dream come true and there are mountains, ocean views, small coves, and cityscapes, often within minutes of each other — even on foot.

so there’s your unvarnished and highly condensed look at the city of vancouver.

next time, we shall look at some other location, but for now, this should relieve some of your curiosity, i hope.