Leaving monday

All a little sudden... This morning it was decided that I'm heading out monday for training and work. So, lots of last minute rushing about. Need to get a laptop and have it set up. Need to get someone to make flight and hotel and car reservations. Bigger issue, need to get a US work Visa. Need to ship some hardware. Figure out what else I need to do to prepare to go.

I hadn't expected to go for a couple weeks, but I guess that's the nature of things now, pretty dynamic. Had a few events planned that I'll miss out on, too bad. Also, better clean out my office, it will no longer be my office by the time I get back, which feels a little sad.

Anyways, first stop Grand Junction CO, second Bridgewater VA, third maybe Portland OR. Yeah Portland wouldn't be bad. Hopefully on future rotations I get to go to more interesting places, but I guess being close by in more familiar situations is better for the first time out.

I should enjoy it.

Oh by the way i have a work-issued cell phone now. I am to become a cell-phony. Talk to me to get the number. I can use it for personal stuff when in calgary, but shouldn't really for long distance. I was in safeway today, and the person in front of me in line gave their phone number instead of showing their safeway club card (as do I) and it sounded like a cell number, and I thought of immediately calling the number. If I have to have a cell phone I might as well try to use it for evil, right? Hopefully the main result of me having a work cell phone in the field isn't so I get work calls at 2AM (or possibly make work calls at 2AM, which isn't any better).

PS if you use skype, let me know, I'll probably be using it.

Dreams

Well last night nothing too exciting, just something about needing to be part of a group photo for work that had me jump out of bed and pull on a shirt and pants over my pjs before realising it was the middle of the night. And something later in the night about jogging with jamie and his friend and then jumping between balconies or something. But it was the night before that was more interesting, I was almost late to work cause I wanted to stay in bed and keep dreaming, and then wanted to make sure I remembered what I dreamt.

Firstly, walking through the snow, or at least with a snowy mountain up ahead, and caught up to a group of three who happened to be Kim, Tuvok, and maybe Paris from Voyageur. (it's on tv when I get home from work so I've been watching parts of it lately). I think at first it was the actors who played them, but soon it was the characters themselves. We were talking, and then somewhere behind us there was this wild dog type of thing. I even rated it a 10 on some wild-dogness scale which meant that it throws bricks at you (yeah doesn't make sense to me either). The star trek people were too 'lets analyse the situation' and didn't close a door (still in the middle of the wilderness) in time, and it caught up to us and threw a brick at me. It missed, and I picked up the brick to throw back at it. But I hesitated, then threw the brick to the ground beside me. (pursuing some Karmic reconciliation?) The mad dog then came up to me and whispered something in my ear, but I unfortunately can't remember what. A warning of some kind I think.

Oh, for some reason, I think I was called "wheatgrass."

Continued on with the star trekkers, now we knew it to be a kindof creepy weird wilderness type of place we were in, no longer snowy at all, large fields with narrow bands of trees, kindof reminds me of edworthy park but on a grand scale. Started to cross a creek with a little bridge, and there was lots of activity in the water and stuff jumping out of the water (seemed to think they were eels at the time) but not enough to pose a danger. But Kim decided to take a bigger more open bridge a little further down, so I went to join them. While running across the bridge, started feeling these stings like small things impacting you hard. Then realised and shouted "plague o' locusts!" as I ran back across the bridge. But where to run to? Somewhere they'd already destroyed everything. So just ran essentially in a big square around a giant field, with the swarm in close pursuit. (I'm not sure where the star trekkers ended up). Completed the square, and across the bridge to where the locusts came from, since they'd have no reason to go back there. Soon felt overwhelmed with heat and passed out.

Woke up and was part of a prisoner chain gang. One other guy used a shovel to pry a shackle loose. He had a midget friend, and they wanted to help me.

Then started waking up for real, and don't remember any more. Pretty messed up. With I could harness some of that creative energy for the conscious world.

Squash

Another coolness about my new job is that my coworkers play squash and I'm invited. Played today, it was fun, had met some of the non-coworkers of the group a couple months ago when we had Japanese Village and watched Transformers. (Hmmm are all my social activities going to become coworker-related?)

Apparently those guys don't go do stuff afterwards, but maybe I'll suggest going out next time. I did remember that G&E teach dance just down the hall at the same time so I can visit a little, but they're busy teaching. And I can't really join in on the class, unless I want to play the part of a really sweaty woman.

Summer in review

As it's been said that the summer appears to be over, I'm taking a little look back. It was really pretty uneventful. Compare to last summer, way less physical activity. Last summer I was at dragonboat 3 times a week, soldiers of fitness 3 times a week, hiking every saturday unless something else special was happening. Very busy all the time. This summer, still did the dragonboat three times a week. But otherwise that was about it. Did some jogging once or twice a week for some of it. Went on just a few hikes with very little elevation gain compared to last year's peaks. So, seems like I did pretty little until this trip down to toronto and area. And it didn't seem like I was doing much other non-physical things either. I guess I went to a couple out of town dragon boats that I didn't do last year, but I didn't go to edmonton at all. Now compare to the summer before that, that was an even more spectacular summer, with a month in vancouver having one of the greatest times of my life, followed by a memorable couple months in ghana and a bit in dubai.

I did do two big things this summer though. I bought a condo, and I changed jobs.

The condo... sounds like a big deal, but isn't really. People say "must be exciting!" It's not. Been here a couple months. Don't spend that much time here since I'm trying to be out doing stuff in the summer. Got a couch that I've hardly ever sat on. Got a queen bed that'll be totally lop-sided if I don't rotate the mattress soon. Didn't eat with my family a whole lot before, so that hasn't changed much. Didn't interact in general a whole lot actually. Don't feel particularly more "grown up" by living by myself. Walk to work instead of biking. Main difference is no smoking, and I'm getting used to it, meaning my parents place smells comparatively even worse than before. Other difference is 50% of my gross disappears into the condo, but I haven't cut back on eating out and theatre and such and it's going okay. I still haven't even explored my community though it's been a couple months. Partly busy, and partly exploring alone is less fun. It's not that I don't know anyone interested in exploring with me, it's that they're all hundreds or thousands of km away.

The job change, a big stressful experience in its inception. But actually started the job a couple weeks ago, first with some matlab programming stuff, similar to before but a different topic, and producing something more tangible, something that feels like it matters more. Then at the start of last week, a big issue arose, and everyone was working on that top priority, and it felt kindof neat to be a part of that. Haven't done as much training as I'd like yet, but has been neat to learn about some hardware and follow some circuits and stuff. Last and this week were supposed to be big training times, got most of the team in town for it, but the big issue kindof derailed all that. We were even supposed to do paintball as team building, but had to cancel that. (yeah this group's definitely the funnest, the few fun people in other groups are jealous.) And the manager's more interactive, energetic, and possibly "down to earth" (maybe cause he's just a couple years older than I am?). But things aren't all good with the new job, some work has been too difficult and I wasn't able to figure it out at all, and some other stuff sounds pretty stressful or overwhelming considering I still know nothing about electronics of RF and know I'm a slow (or stationary) learner. But hopefully I'll learn enough to do a sufficient job. And even though I'm officially less of an engineer than before, I certainly feel like more of one and don't feel like a complete fraud to wear the ring.

Still wonder about Japan sometimes though...

Photos

A subset from my trip down to Toronto area are finally online (and parts are even nicely sorted). http://members.shaw.ca/scotthiking2007a/Toronto2007/index.htm

More dragonboat... no more dragonboat

After coming back from my trip monday night, immediately got wrapped up in dragonboat again. Practice on tues/thurs night and away to kelowna friday night. Barely got to see my brother since he was out wed night and was leaving before I came back from kelowna. So even though I really needed to catch up on sleep after my trip, I still stayed up late and kept getting below-average amounts of sleep. Then finished it off with a dragonboat out of town festival, I'm barely awake now.

Thurs practice, last of the season... wanted to take the boat back after, one last little bit on the reservoir with the setting sun, you know that's my kind of thing... but for one of the few times in the whole season, there were other people who actually wanted to take the boat back so they did it instead. Oh well. I found those couple were acting a little strange all week actually, but I'm probably just letting my imagination get away again.

Got a ride out to Kelowna... our driver was "fun", which had the girls kindof freaked out but I thought it was kindof cool. Though perhaps it's smarter to be nervous about passing trucks and going round corners at those crazy speeds in the mountains. The loud exhaust is cool for a while but gets tiresome for long trips. But, the people were pretty fun, and the music was mostly good. Arrived about 11:30 pm pacific time, went to the lounge for some people to have drinks, then hung out with people playing poker until who knows what time.

Don't know if it's cause of the beds, or cause I was so tired, or cause of the other person, but I was barely even aware of sleeping beside someone, whereas normally I end up not sleeping too well. He did snore a little but not enough to keep me up.

Saturday headed down to race site, hung around a while then realised our race was imminent and with no stretching or prep we had to rush to starting line and roster on-the-fly as we jumped in the boat. Reminds me of the good old days of Topmade in Kelowna! Only had 18 paddlers but only missed 1st by 0.02 seconds.

Had lunch at a nearby restaurant, but not the usual Earls that we normally end up going to. Actually didn't walk down that way at all the whole weekend, kindof sad.

Warm up for afternoon race, Jeff lead using a cantonese accent (yeah chinese can do chinese accent). Can't describe it, it was hilarious, was more of an ab workout from laughing than a stretching session, the whole team was cracking up. Raced against pacific reach 2, were beside them and would have had a good fight for first but a novice team steered into us about 150m in. Tried paddling through it but the boat was almost capsizing (BUK boats have much lower gunnel than Dynasty) and we had to quit. It hit right where I would have been sitting if we hadn't switched sides on the way out to the start line. So our Sistership guest lost her paddle and beheaded the other boat. But at least everyone was okay. Instead of reracing it, they DQ'd the team that hit us, and moved us to a different race. Unfortunately were back in the 6-16 boats, and didn't even have a fighting chance for first place vs the best team of the weekend. Our second place got us into Diamond division (below Platinum).

Many people were going for winery tours in the evening, and though I wasn't interested in the wineries, of course I was interested in being with the people. Drove by Pandosy Inn and reminisced with Arnold. Not much to see at the first winery, so a few of us fell asleep in lounge chairs outside. I woke up as someone put something in my mouth, but just said "What the hell?!!" with a pissed off look as I took it out. My imagination somehow figured it was a coin, but it was actually a chocolate, so it wasn't too bad. Meanwhile, they were doing the same thing to Arnold of course (like at every festival it seems, now I know how he feels) and also as expected he didn't wake up. They did some chest knuckle thing to wake him up, not sure what that's all about. At the second winery, tasted a little bit of a few as others were tasting them. Of course they all tasted disgusting in my opinion, except an ice wine which was bearable.

Japanese restaurant was ok, pretty expensive. Most of the team was there, but of course not the 'prodigies' (yeah I know that's from the old topmade team but there's such a resemblance). Arnold tried to sneak wasabi into someone's green tea ice cream. Just back to the hotel afterwards. Visited my favorites for a bit till they went to bed and kicked me out, then visited the women's poker game and the men's poker game (which was now in my room... oh yeah, our room got switched and they moved our stuff cause a pipe or something broke in our old room.. at least no damage to our stuff.) Went to bed/sleep ~1:30 despite the game and noise, don't think it lasted much longer.

Probably the first one up in the morning, got ready and packed cause I thought we were going to a real restaurant for breakfast. But others didn't get up. And the restaurant was closed anyways. So hung with the couple other early risers. Made it to race site not too long after we were supposed to meet there, were the first ones on site besides Charlene who had flown in and was probably wondering where everyone was. Others arrived soon after, except the prodigies who were another hour, but it didn't matter anyways cause it was windy and the races got delayed over an hour. Then they started, but changed them to 250m, going the opposite direction, and staggering the running starts. Didn't catch up the schedule at all. We did well enough in our race to make it to the final rather than consolation.

Lots of waiting around bored, couldn't go wander off really cause who knows what would happen with the schedule. Hung out with Andrew a while. Saw someone with a golf club, and saw a toilet paper roll on the grass for some reason, I made a joking suggestion and soon enough he was there and it was flying through the air leaving a trailing stream of toilet paper! So juvenile, so fun. He cleaned it up so as not to be too irresponsible.

The festival did all the womens races, but things were so far behind, they canceled all six mixed consolation races. Then weather got worse and noone could race, so they canceled four of the mixed finals with the remaining two as maybe. The weather eventually cleared up, and Diamond A and Platinum A got to race, even let us do regular 500m. We came 5th in our division, putting us 17th overall, but everyone was close together and deserved to be racing each other. Watched the Platinum A final, it was great, most teams were pretty much side by side through most of the race, then about 75m from the finish line, River city dragons (from Winnipeg) (the team that kicked our ass saturday) finally decided to start trying, and shot out 3/4 boat length ahead before reaching the finish line! It was amazing to see, it was like they were just toying with the other teams, letting them think they had a chance.

Our second team had already taken off when their gold division final was canceled, so those of us still there quickly packed up. Many left before I could say bye. Back to the hotel for a quick shower in the pool area, and on the road again back to Calgary. Back to crazy speeds. I fell asleep pretty quick, and once again I got abused because of it. I awoke to the sound of one girl scream while the other shouted "OH MY GOD!!!" while we lurched forwards as the brakes were slammed, with my vision filled by the bright light inside the car. As you'd expect, I didn't scream or anything, but my hand went up to brace and apparently my eyes were pretty wide. A couple seconds later I realised there had been no impact, and I looked sideways and saw a camera pointed at me, and knew what was going on. Actually, it's kindof unfortunate that they messed up with the camera and failed to get a photo of me, I would have liked to see my reaction, it must have been pretty funny cause everyone was laughing hysterically (except me who was still kindof stunned). Honestly though, I didn't really feel scared during those moments. I felt that the car was going to be smashed, but I didn't anticipate harm or pain. Maybe there just wasn't time.

Three cars of the convoy had dinner together in Revelstoke. Interesting to observe the seating choices. Everyone got to share stories a bit more, then back on the road. The high speeds near Golden were too much for one passenger, so our driver slowed down and took it easy for the rest of the trip. After passing us our convoy even phoned to check things were okay. Got back into Calgary around 3 AM, I took someone home before crawling into my own bed around 3:30 am. So much for catching up on any sleep.

But with dragonboat over, so it feels that the summer is too. Farewell my friend till next year.

Toronto, Waterloo, Orangeville,

Highlights of my trip to Toronto, Waterloo, and Orangeville...

Left here 1 AM fri night, arrived 7 am sat morning, quite tired of course. Walked around several parts of toronto, saw some neat stuff. Evening went to High Park and saw a modified version of a Midsummer Night's Dream in the amphitheatre... I thought it would be pretty amateur but it was actually professional actor type people. Really fun and very well done. Sunday, was up early again (in fact, almost every night of my vacation was go to bed sometime after 1 am, up well before 7 am) and got a ride downtown. Friend's cousin creatively got us into the CNE. Like stampede with rides/games, but with more shows. A figure skating tribute to broadway was good. A few others too. In evening, a chinese lantern festival, very elaborate displays, and some performances like chinese acrobats doing crazy stuff.

Monday went to Waterloo. Not as much exciting stuff to do there, and a less 'active/outgoing' friend, but older/closer friend so still lots of fun. Chatted lots, played some old computer games, some new board games, went to run some errands, etc.

Wednesday evening went to the new health recovery centre near Orangeville. I'm kindof lost and not sure what's going on. But it's very pretty at night. Set up a tent in the dark. Run into people I know, got put to work right away. Got to be a librarian, in charge of the sutras for the few days of chanting. Spent most of the next couple days setting up or closing the temples, tons of chanting, and other errands in between, quite busy. When not busy, often watched the Taoist chanting (we normally do Confucian) or helped out some of the hong kong temple people. Still going to bed really late and up very early. Even when there's not much need to stay up too late, find people to have tea and chat with and relax at the end of the day. Many people from around the world. Saturday after the chanting ended around noon, even more (couple thousand) were there. Speeches and performances and ribbon cutting in mid afternoon for grand opening. Even got a rainbow in the rainless sky. Very proud / special event. A bunch of evening entertainment was very good. Feel a little lonely despite the crowds of people.

Next day (sunday) the beautiful weather of the previous few days disappeared, and I packed up the tent in the rain and went back to Toronto... Could have stayed at the temple another day, but somehow, after the special events of the previous few days, it would now probably feel pretty empty and I would miss it. In toronto, BBQ at my friend's. Badminton in the evening. Lots of fun.

Final day (monday) mostly by myself (friend at work), walked around the island (nothing special) and shopped a bit. Had dinner with my friend before going to the airport and heading home to Calgary. Arrive late, still no catching up on sleep before starting my new job, oh well.

Overall, very pleased with pretty much every aspect of my trip!

Could write so much more about the cool details. Will probably post a few photos some time... but very busy with dragonboat again for a few more days.