I haven't been blogging much lately, though I've wanted to. I don't know, I'm lazy. We still can't drink the water here in Vancouver, and it's been over a week and a half now. It's complicated, but I'm getting used to it. At work it's a hassle, using cans of pop, juice and store-bought bagged ice for everything.


A view from my balcony at the snow, early Sunday day.


The same view at night.


A view out my side window at the tree next door with lights.

The snow started yesterday and has been coming down ever since. I'm actually enjoying it. It's been so long since I've seen snow like this, it's beautiful and everywhere, and actually sticking to the ground. My auntie is here visiting at my parents house from Connecticut. We were all supposed to go out for dinner tonight downtown but they're not coming anymore. Apparently, the snow is much worse in Surrey.

Saturday was a rough day at work, busy and long. I ordered a Pad Thai to go afterwards, took it home and then convinced Tara to brave the elements and come and hang out. We rented a foreign film called Spare Parts, about human trafficking in Slovenia, ate Pad Thai and drank Bailey's Irish Cream on the rocks while it snowed outside.



Outside the Contemporary Art Gallery on Nelson.

Today, I went downtown to get some pants altered and then wandered around the city a bit, before coming back to Kits and walking along the beach down by the Watermark and home again. It was cold, my feet were soaked through and numb. I hate to admit that I don't have a proper coat, or gloves or a toque, but I toughed it out anyways.


Bricks in Yaletown.


A small waterfall in a park near Yaletown.


The waterway at the park.


8th and Yew...(Correction: Actually 7th and Yew)


Kits beach in the snow, you can just barely make out Stanley Park across the bay.

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Our polluted reservoir...
Will it ever stop raining? It started about a week ago and has been going strong ever since. We've had overflowing storm drains, power outages...even a building collapse on Commercial! The influx of rain has caused so many mudslides up in the mountains that our drinking water reservoirs are contaminated with mud and dare I say it...feces? The entire Greater Vancouver Regional District, which includes over a million people, is on a boil-water alert. It started Thursday and is expected to last until at least Sunday, when...you guessed it, we're expecting another storm. So who knows what will happen then?

Anyways, here on the West Coast where you can hardly walk a block without seeing a Starbucks, or make it through the day without your latte, Starbucks has stopped serving coffee, and SBC and Tim Hortons and pretty much every restaurant in the city. Bottled water is flying off the shelves, the entire stock at the downtown Costco was gone in 13 minutes.

At work today, we couldn't serve any of our pops from the gun and resorted to canned pop, all bottled waters and boiled water tea. We aren't serving coffee, hell, I can't even wash my hands in the tap water. There's special buckets of sanitizer that we use. Oh yeah, and to top it all off, we had a burst boiler this morning, and had to open an hour late while it was getting fixed.


In other news, I won two passes to a special premiere screening of the new James Bond film, Casino Royale, last night, from the Westender. Tara and I showed up at 7ish and the theatre was already crowded. It turned out there was another premiere for Tenacious D and The Pick Of Destiny and half the crowd was there to see that. In the end, though, we were a bit late and ended up having to sit in the fourth row. Daniel Craig makes a great Bond, a Bond with emotions and weaknesses and a Bond that falls in love, while driving fast cars, wearing dapper suits and drinking stiff martinis. The scenery is beautiful from Prague to London to Montenegro, the Bahamas, Venice and beautiful Como, Lombardia in Italy, which will take your breathe away.


In this film, the third screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, we start off learning how Agent James Bond became a double-0 and received his license to kill. His mission is to win a $150 million dollar Poker tournament against an international terrorist banker, known as Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre had been using his clients money in high-risk volatile stocks and after Bond foils a terrorist attack, Le Chiffre loses over $100 million of his clients money. He then sets up the Poker tournament in an attempt to win it back, but doesn't count on Bond being such a great player.

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Simply because one of the top search strings for this blog is:
"what does qu'est-ce que c'est mean?"

It's pronounced kess-kuh-say.

It's pretty easy if you break it down...
We have three words to deal with:

que - what/that
est - is
ce - it

Without the contractions we have: Que Est Ce Que Ce Est?
Translated directly: What Is It That It Is?

or simply: What is it?


Psycho Killers at the Bebop Cafe!
Why The Second Layer: Qu'est-ce que c'est?
This all stems from a 1978 song by The Talking Heads called 'Psycho Killer' that goes something like this:

I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax
I can't sleep cause my bed's on fire
Don't touch me I'm a real live wire

Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est
Far better
Run away
Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est
Far better
Run away
Oh yeah

You start a conversation you can't seem to finish it
You're talkin' a lot but you're not sayin' anything
When I have nothing to say my lips are sealed
Say something once why say it again

Ce que j'ai fait, ce soir la (What I did tonight there)
Ce qu'elle a dit, ce soir la (What she said tonight there)
Realisant, mon espoir (Realizing, my hope)
Je me lance vers la gloire (I toss it to the glory)
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they're not polite

The first time I heard this song, it was being covered by the house band at the BeBop Cafe, Pai, Northern Thailand. They played an awesome version...complete with the fa, fa, fa, fa's and cadent bass that make this song so cool. The Second Layer: WHAT IS IT?

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HAPPY

DAY




Enjoy your Pepero children, enjoy!

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I have a friend who went to LA early this year to train to teach Bikram's yoga. It was an intensive program, costing almost ten thousand dollars. She's back now and teaching.




Bikram's yoga is a style of yoga created by Bikram Choudhury. He claims his style is the only true hatha yoga practiced in the West. It's a series of 26 yoga postures called asanas and two breathing exercises performed in a 40.5C (100F) room during a 90 minute period. The heat loosens the muscles, helps to prevent injury and makes you sweat excessively, leeching out toxins.

I tried it for the first time on Monday night with a couple of earls girls. We decided to go to the 10pm class. It's a good idea to wear as little as possible because it gets really, really hot and sweaty and humid in the room, you're not allowed to leave, and you're not allowed to drink water until after a specified time, and you can't talk or laugh or do anything, except the poses for an hour and a half. The class was composed of mostly girls, in skimpy shorts and tops. There's really no time to look around though, you have to concentrate on the poses or you'll fall over.



It started off fairly easily with forceful breathing and stretching, bending, working the spinal cord and nervous system, then it got more difficult. Working the circulatory system, by cutting off blood flow to certain parts of the body and then letting it come back. Then much harder, balancing, twisting limbs and joints.

You can't bring watches or timers in, and there's no clock, so I had no idea what the hell time it was, or how long more I would be in that hot room. It's like doing intensive stretching and exercise in a hot sauna, breathing in the thick humid air full of everyone else's sweat. By the midway mark, my shorts were soaked through, my towel was soaked through, and I was slick all over, dripping onto the floor. My hands tingled, my face tingled, I couldn't catch my breath. I felt like I was going to puke, like I had to leave the room, like I was going to pass out.

But I stayed in there. The goal of the first session is not to do all the poses, which would have been impossible for me, but to stay in the room. I stayed. I got through about a third of the poses before having to stop and rest, then a few more before becoming totally exhausted near the end. I just lay there in the resting pose, trying to catch my breath, trying to not be hot, looking at half-naked sweaty girls around me.

Anyways, afterwards I felt great. Tired, but good and it was a helluva workout. You're supposed to try and go at least once every five days, but with my schedule I think I'll only be able to manage once a week. And I will go back, and try to do it regularly.

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Komay Dakay No Sakay Jizakay is the name of our sake at the Red Door. I love that name.

You have to watch this Venezualan music video. It is the best song ever!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugDdFjlvfW4

Last night, Matt and Mike and I went to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorius Nation of Khazakstan and it was awesome. Honestly, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. The theatre was packed for the 5:00 show and we had to sit in the third row, which gave me headache and sucked, but the movie was great. My favourite scene has to be the naked Yazamat Bagatov vs Borat Sagdiyev wrestling.



Afterwards we went to El Furniture, then Doolins, but I wasn't feeling it. Matt stirred up some shit and I had to go, so I went home. That was that. I woke up this morning for work with a terrible headache and hung over.

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Feeling right now: Frustrated!

The rain has come again, and it's been cold. Very cold and wet. Looking out from my back deck at the alleyway.

I had Thursday off work and school, so I walked down to Granville Island and had a gyro and hung out with the seagulls in the rain and watched the boats. Headed downtown to buy a new phone then went to the library to borrow a copy of Lonely Planet India for my book. It was the only Lonely Planet that I didn't keep for my trip. I remember selling it to a book vendor in Connaught Square in New Delhi, before I left for Turkey. I was with Glyn, and oddly enough it was raining that day too. He told me that I wouldn't regret getting rid of it. Well, now I kind of do, because in order to properly write about where I went, I need that copy with all my notes and stuff. Oh well. Thanks a lot Glyn. Now Glyn is in Sana'a, Hadramawat, Yemen with no beers. Take that!

There we were in Delhi, in the rain, and we went to a bar and drank Kingfishers that were way too expensive for India. It was the last time I would see Glyn in person. I think we were supposed to go see the Qutb Minar or something like that, but just ended up getting wasted instead, and the bus ticket man was smoking weed on the bus. I remember that.

Today, as soon as my lazy friends get up, we're all going downtown to Wings on Granville for wings and beers and then off to see Borat at the Paramount. I can't wait. It's been like 8 months! Borat is finally here!

NIIICE!

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