Personal

Or at least, it was when I started this post, now it’s almost 13 months!

•  It is still beautiful, breathtakingly so
•  We feel more settled for some reason, even though it is a new place
•  Definitely more relaxed than I’ve ever been, which is saying a lot
•  The cat is getting fatter, wait, that’s always been true
•  Making friends is not easy in a non-university setting, but I’ve managed
•  Fresh start, new habits, new zeal/drive, new person, not so much!
•  The cable/cellphone/internet services make me long for the states. Rude monopolists abound and there is no competition/innovation.
•  The “establishment” is very strong here, and the news media is very deferential
•  Our famous social safety net is fraying, but it does not have the American charity/philanthropic base to replace the funding cuts
•  We think we are an environmental leader, we are not and it is getting worse
•  I worry that we are making no efforts to transition to the 21st century
•  I still follow Carolina basketball, Go Heels!
•  Facebook has made it very easy to keep in touch, given I am a terrible phone caller
•  I still do not get hockey, did I mention I do not like fights?
•  Let’s just say I’ve gone DIY on alcohol
•  The BC Liberals are anything, but!
•  Victoria feels like a slightly more urban Chapel Hill-Carrboro, but needs a Weaver Street Market.
• Blogging has gotten non-existent, for a number of reasons.

1. Umm, blog more, perhaps?
2. Political rants belong on facebook. Yes, I tend to be better informed than most people I know, but the knowledge is derivative and gleaned from reading other blogs. Now unless I have some rare, personal insight, is there any point in venting on a blog, as opposed to just putting it on facebook so your friends can cluck along with you?
3. Blogs are meant for sharing, if you don’t tell anyone about your blog, there is no point
4. Science is supposed to be communicated. It behoves all scientists to try their utmost to speak and write in an easy to understand manner and assume no inside information or prior knowledge when speaking to the general public
5. Did I say, blog more already?
6. Media, pictures, more colour!
7. Explore ways of capturing insights when away from a computer, as in, talking in the car into a recorder (yes, looks silly, but I’ve lost that battle a while back!)

We will see how that goes, anyway, Happy New Year!!

Wow, I woke up at 4 AM Eastern, caught a 6:50 flight out of RDU to Seattle, then drove 3 hours to the ferry, through the most peaceful immigration and customs ever where I forgot to mention my cat and somehow, it was okay! Being a Canadian is just so much nicer than living in the US of A. I got various questions barked at me by US immigration on the way to the states. The person at Canadian was calm, polite and took 30 seconds to clear me, though I guess she missed the pet.

A 1:40 ferry ride + 1/2 hour drive home later, it’s past 10 Eastern Time and I’ve been traveling for 16 hours. Did I mention I did all this with a cat? But, my beastie was the least of my troubles, he was very sweet! The Sherpa Delta carrier we got (on sale!) worked like a charm, very few people knew I had a pet with me at all times, and I was able to actually even smuggle him into the passenger deck of the Tsawwassen-Schwartz Bay ferry! Highly recommended. It fits very nicely under the seat, I was very apprehensive about carrying this supposedly “high maintenance” cat on plane, airport shuttle, car and boat, but he was such a trooper, very proud.

He’s still a little weirded out by the new place, no idea where he is and most definitely does not feel like he’s home. It’s gotten suspiciously quiet all of a sudden, wonder what he’s doing, napping, hopefully.

All right, no more traveling. I was supposed to blog some when I was in North Carolina, somehow, never happened. I don’t blog well when I’m relaxed, apparently. But, I want to snk my teeth into all this carbon tax brouhaha, and I finally found some time to read the definitive guide to Canadian environmental policy, Unnatural Law, so at least I am now not completely ignorant about Canada.

Update:

Found the cat, clearly he has a bath tub thing, he’s done this in Chapel Hill too.

Update!!!!

Open my mail to see an envelope from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, pick it up and instantly feel that tell tale card, yes, my PR card is finally here, and I guess the photograph I sent them in February from NC finally got to them, hooray, I am now mostly Canadian! If they’d sent it a little earlier, could have avoided this whole Seattle driving brouhaha, but who cares! Man, what a day!!

Pardon all the exclamation points, this card’s given me all kinds of grief, and it’s frigging crazy for it to show up just like that…

Got 45.765 Liters or 12.089 gallons to go 400 miles on my first full tank in Victoria, which works out to 33 mpg, which is about 10% better than anything my car (admittedly not a terribly fuel efficient small car) has ever done. Why? Top speed on my commute’s 90kmph (or 55 mph), and that’s only for 7 km. The first 10-15 minutes is stop and go at 50 kmph which doesn’t do much for gas, but the rest is either 80 or 90 kmph, which is about the most optimum speed for maximizing fuel efficiency.

Take home message if it hasn’t been proven a million times already, lowering speed most definitely improves fuel efficiency!

I guess that makes up for the slowish commute. C’mon city of Victoria, get a fast bus across at 7:30 AM, not 7 so I don’t have to wake up at an ungodly hour to take it!

Yikes, my last few posts have been, shall we say “bitter”? Enough of that, how about some boring pictures. Not that I take too many! But, it’s all pictures and no thinking/analysis in this post.

It’s been 4 weeks to the day I arrived in Victoria and the weather’s been completely and utterly whacked out. We had snow on Friday…

Of course, it was too warm for the snow to stick, just came down for about half an hour or so and cleared right away, followed by sun an hour later. Up in Nanaimo, they got 25cm of snow. Toronto, on the other hand, was in shorts, poetic justice, my local acquaintances tell me because us islanders usually rub our wonderful weather in every other Canadian’s face. But, it isn’t really that cold, just not warm. And the crazy instability has its pluses. Did I ever mention that 4 days in a row, I saw some spectacular rainbows on the way back from work, to the point that I was getting a little blase about it? This place is all about micro climates. It will be sunny in Victoria, and as I drive towards Sidney to work, passing Elk Lake, the temperature drops significantly and there’s always more cloud and rain. Then Sidney has it’s own thing going on, could be cloudy, never know. So, always pack a raincoat and a layer or two!

Anyway, went to Thetis Lake this Sunday for a leisurely hike around the lake with a few acquaintances. As usual, beautiful. Spring is here, and it was really interesting to see all the blooming flowers interspersed with patches of snow. Yep, snow and flowers, a little unusual (didn’t take any pictures of flowers, unfortunately).

It’s also the greenest time on the year because it’s been raining all winter and also getting warmer in the last few weeks, so everything’s alive and the evergreens are, well, very green. As it warms up more and the rain goes away, it apparently gets a lot browner. Also saw a bald eagle encircling the parking lot, that’s probably the fourth or fifth one I’ve seen here.

Some random pictures of the lake. The upper trail goes uphill immediately and leads to some beautiful vistas overlooking the lake. I don’t think my cellphone camera does it any justice, looks like I might have to invest in a real camera soon.

That’s it, I guess. Enough of the pictures. I am going to be hiking every weekend from now on, there are so many trails, This website actually rates quite a few of them by difficulty, ought to keep me busy for a year or two!

Back to bitter in a bit, and some environmental posts later. Meanwhile, looks like the the ol’ chief finally made it out of Gaul (if you don’t get it, click the link!)

Well, it’s been an interesting and full week in Beautiful BC (the other BBC), I found a home:

It has a nice view from the window

and a not so nice view from the same window, which I shall not post because it gives away my location, you’re either going to have to email me or, god forbid, visit!
 
And it is in close proximity (5 minute walk) to the wonderful Beacon Hill Park.

Once the weather gets better (Yes Virginia, long “rant” about the weather’s just up ahead, keep reading!), I look forward to running from home through Beacon Hill Park to the gorgeous seashore on Dallas Road, about a kilometer away (yes, I’ve gone metric).

Not the greatest of photos, but it was rainy and foggy. Yes, you can’t really escape nature in this part of the world, even though Victoria’s dense and urban for its size, you turn the corner and suddenly, you’re in a park or on a waterfront.

The weather, well, it’s crazy. Last Tuesday, or Wednesday, I can’t remember, I was at my local Y taking a tour before joining the gym and it was sunny when I entered, my gym guide points the sky out to me 15 minutes later from the 2nd floor of the gym (nice scenic view of beautiful church grounds from the treadmills, BTW) and lo and behold, hail! Apparently, every few years or so, one gets bad weather from Russia, damn them. But, he did say that if you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes, and there it was, sunshine again. I step out after joining the gym and walk back to my funky inn, it starts raining, oh well, it rained 5 minutes then the sun came out, then 5 minutes later, sleet. It did not rain frogs, or cats or dogs, so I did not see everything, but still, way too much weather action in an hour. It is not warm yet, but it is not terribly cold either, always hovers above or around freezing at night, and gets warmer up to 8 degrees (45) in the day time. I am told that it will get warmer soon. Really does not matter, though, it’s still very nice and the people here pretend that the weather does not exist, so I am going to be one with the locals!

In other good news, I found an excellent video store, Pic-a-Flic which is in Cook Street Village, just around the corner (literally) from where I live, nice little neighborhood, lots of “character”, which is sometimes problematic! I haven’t really hung out yet, except to go to a couple of bars and to watch Carolina games and the heartbreaking Davidson-Kansas game (why did the coach make the star of the team and its best shooter also bring the ball up the floor on the last play and make him create his own shot instead of setting up a play where he came off a screen to catch and shoot, his forte, I will never understand) at the Oak Bay Recreation Centre with a fellow Tarheel fan (born and brought up in Victoria!). I just happened to run into him in the bar of the inn I was at for a week and I happened to mention where I was from, he nearly jumped out of his skin! So, I guess that baby blue blood helps once in a while! GO HEELS!

And yes, I started work as well, promises to be interesting, though it is a 35 minute commute, which is what you get for living in a cool neighborhood 🙂

First impressions, well, it’s all very exciting and new, but I have the depressing habit of getting my routines going quickly, so I go to work, go to the gym, eat dinner, read blogs/novels/surf for a while, and the day’s done, so what’s changed? The drive to work’s much more scenic, the walk to the gym is much nicer, the country’s language, rhetoric, radio, everything is so much more in line with my values (CBC Vancouver occasionally makes NPR sound like Rush Limbaugh, I kid you not!). There are tons of organic markets, farmers’ markets (summer only), the produce is generally cheap, though packaged goods are expensive, Michael Pollan would approve!

Victoria has its warts, there are burgeoning drug and homelessness issues that seem to be driven by income inequality and lack of affordable housing. The climate also attracts people seeking shelter from the brutal winter of the rest of Canada. I am reading and hearing that parts of downtown can be dangerous for cars, not people though.

All in all, an eventful week, can’t believe it’s only been a week, I feel like i’ve been here a lot longer, but I’ve spent exactly 3 nights at my new place.

More later, I might have exhausted all this personal blogging energy, probably back to regularly scheduled blogging soon.

Warning: Personal post ahead, don’t read if you don’t know me!

Well, since life’s changing quite a bit, what with moving from Chapel Hill to Victoria and all, I haven’t been thinking of bloggable issues, which means this blog has been rotting away to almost nothingness. But, what the hell, mostly friends and the occasional person searching for sea turtles and/or India find me out in the far hinterlands of the ‘net. So, I will cater to my friends and post a personal update!

Made it to Victoria safe and sound, though not without all kinds of adventures in the security line at RDU, place was a zoo of unprecedented (for me) proportions. But, a beautiful and sunny day in Victoria greeted me, and if I had not left my camera behind and simultaneously misplaced the SD micro card on my cellphone (its memory is full up), maybe I would have taken some pictures! I am staying at this place that is half hotel half hostel. The room’s tiny and spare, the place has a homely feel to it, the kitchen serves excellent food for four bucks, and has nice beer on tap. The place is alive and has character in a way a hotel would never have.

Apartment hunting starts in earnest tomorrow. My very friendly bartender informs me that finding a place takes time, and that May 1 is a great time because a lot of students (it is a town with a decent sized university) leave then. But can I stay here for a month? hmm, don’t know about that.

Jet lag hits, so I am going to take it easy. Tomorrow’s a crazy busy day with apartment hunting, applying for all kinds of government cards, etc, luckily, I am a few blocks away from city hall (this ho(s)tel’s location is impeccable.

Adios, my brain’s fried and my eyes can’t focus any more, I’ve been up for 20 hours, time to wind down!