Category: Personal

I’m now two weeks into a contract with TransLink, the Vancouver transit agency. It’s a big shift – last month, I was still doing cloth simulation and telecommuting for a Toronto firm.

The job itself involves measuring the performance of the transit system – what fraction of the population lives near frequent-service bus/SkyTrain, how full the buses are, etc. It’s mostly straightforward GIS and database work, both of which are fairly novel to me. I’ve been playing with Safe Software’s FME, a sort of graphical programming language; it’s surprisingly similar in philosophy to Houdini and the cloth simulation I was working on before.

It’s nice to be in the transportation industry. I’ve been mulling a switch for some time now, and I’m glad I took the plunge. It’s great to be around other people who are really excited by this stuff. The contract itself is mostly a chance for me to get a feel for the industry, before I return to Toronto for a degree in transportation planning.

After two and a half years of telecommuting, working in an office is also refreshing. I was never a “working in my underwear” telecommuter (to the great relief of my housemates), but it’s still a bit of a shock to work in an office with a dress code. I’m treating it as a novelty for now, and enjoying it. I’m biking two days a week, getting through some fiction on the bus+SkyTrain the other days, and taking in a lot from the iPod every day. There’s not much free time left in the day when I have a 50 minute commute each way to Metrotown, but I can deal with that for a few months.

It’s been a shopping week. Two of my favourite possessions passed away this week: my Italespresso caffettiere’s plastic melted when I left the element on too long, and my messenger bag finally gave up the ghost. Both were souvenirs of 1999-2000, a good year in my life. I got the original caffettiere from a small market in Iseo, Italy on the recommendation of Gianmarco, and I bought the messenger bag in Toronto in late 2000 based on Lars’ and Mike Ang’s style suggestions.

So now I have two shiny new pieces of technology: an ultra hightech iPod video, and an ultra lowtech caffettiere. They both represent pinnacles of design, to my mind. The caffettiere is the simplest possible machine to produce such high-quality espresso, has a very elegant form, and yet costs less than $30. The iPod has not yet perfected simplicity to the same extent, but it does a much better job than the competition, and it’s definitely stylish in form. I still enjoy looking at the iPod accessory market and seeing endless docks with digital +/- buttons for the volume: most electronics makers still don’t understand the advantages of the iPod’s jogwheel, and only mimicked the visual design features of the iPod while ignoring the functionality improvements.

I’ve caught up to rest of the world by buying in to 2001-era audio technology. All I need is a cellphone, cable TV and a car, and I may just be able to rejoin the modern world. Okay, I’ll pass on the last two, but I think I will get a cellphone before the year is out. And a new messenger bag. Does anyone know any Manhattan Portage retailers in Vancouver?

I’m now back in Vancouver. I’m not going to make this webpage a tell-all about my personal life, but let’s just say that I had two major downers during my ten weeks in Toronto. (Talk to me in person if you want the gory details.)

So, it’s nice to be back. I’ve spent too much time away from town – five of the last nine months were spent outside Vancouver. The cherry trees are just starting to flower, the back yard is filled with thick, lush grass, the slopes have a healthy amount of snow, and the grapefruit are hatching.

I’ve just returned from a week-long trip to Cartagena, Colombia. The occasion was Kathryn’s brother’s wedding, and it was a beautiful visit. We stayed at a resort facing the Carribean, and it was mostly a resort-centred week: bodysurfing in the ocean, swimming in the pools, and enjoying unlimited piña coladas. The wedding itself was lovely, and a great chance to meet Kathryn’s extended family.

Cartagena itself was a surprise to me. My only prior visit to Latin America was a daytrip to Tijuana, and I knew the poverty there was a side-effect of its border location. Cartagena seemed fairly prosperous, but perhaps they keep it looking nice for the large tourist industry. It had a lovely old town, with a very European feel: pedestrian streets, squares with cafes and restaurants, and old cathedrals. The new town was bustling and modern, and the little beach-focused neighbourhoods seemed quiet and easygoing. Overall, the place felt like it would fit in on the European side of the Mediterranean: bits of Marseille, bits of the sleepy beach towns on the Adriatic coast of Italy, bits of the Costa del Sol in Spain. Mind you, there was a strong police and military presence around to achieve this feel: police everywhere, machine-gun toting guards here and there, and even a camouflaged chopper overhead at one point. That didn’t really interfere with the experience too much, though.

And of course it was nice and hot: a comfortable 30 degrees every day, and warm nights. I managed to avoid a sunburn, but I got a wide variety of jellyfish stings crisscrossing my body during a snorkelling daytrip. It was great to visit a reef again, for the first time since my visit to Lady Elliott Island in the Great Barrier Reef at the age of seven. The reef was deeper than I expected: you had to dive a good 3 to 4 meters down to reach the coral and fish. In some ways, that made it more rewarding, since you had to really work at it to get a good view of the brilliant colours.

The buffet served weird and tasty fruits: lulo, pitaya, mora and the tangy tamarillo (tree tomato). Oranges were green, limes and plantains were popular, but lemons and bananas weren’t around anywhere. Confused yet?

I’d highly recommend coastal Colombia to North Americans. It seems to be quite popular with Latin American tourists, but there were few white faces around – probably scared off by press coverage of the country.