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A quick summer jumps over the lazy blog

Perhaps I should feel like a neglectful gardener, leaving this blog to shrivel up and die over the dry summer. But I don’t.

A quick summary of the highlights: undergrad classmates Zhan and Ed came out for a visit in July, which included a Whistler hike, and watching a Jeopardy winning friend take home a cool 50 grand. I visited London, England in late July to attend my high school friend Geoffrey’s wedding in Winchester. I met up with other old friends there: Rachel and Anna were at the wedding, and Jacqueline from Australia is working for the BBC in London now. Some vacation pictures are up on my Flickr page with more to come.

August flew by far too quickly. I was working like mad, and preparing for my move to Toronto. Most of my free time was spent visiting with various friends, old and new; I’ll miss them all. The rest of it went to working on a new website for the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, which should be going up soon. The highlight of the summer was my brother’s wedding to the lovely Jasmine at the end of August. We had a great, debauched wilderness bachelor party near Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, polishing off an entire Texas mickey of rye and too much beer to count. The wedding itself was perfect in every way, with a great crowd of family and various friends.

My work at TransLink wrapped up well; I’ll put up a post later describing that work, once I’ve figured out what I can actually say in a public forum like this.

And now I’ve just landed in Toronto. I have a miniscule apartment waiting for me once the labour day weekend winds up. I found it over the Internet (yay, viewit! thanks to sabrina for putting me onto that tool) and Paul inspected it for me before taking it. I just took a look at the place from the outside last night, and it looks like a great building and a spectacular neighbourhood (Queen just west of Bathurst). Now I’m gearing up for a return to school and the completion of my career change: transportation planning, here I come.

Over and out. And maybe now that I’m back at the blog, I can develop a less boring and functional speaking style. But don’t count on it – I’m a bureaucrat now.

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Fictalicious

It’s been a good few months for my fiction consumption. After losing interest in science fiction after high school, and getting really into non-fiction, I haven’t really read much. Vacations are good for my intake, and so is riding transit to work. I’ve had a bit of both in 2006, and so far I’ve made it through the following books, fiction and non-fiction:

  • Eleanor Rigby, Douglas Coupland
  • The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
  • A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
  • The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
  • The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
  • Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte
  • The Lost Painting, Jonathan Harr
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers

… plus the recently mentioned Paris 1919. By my recent standards, this is a redoubtable feat: two books a month! (Even if 40% of those were still non-fiction…)

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Transit measurement

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.

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Tofino

I’d heard the buzz. Tofino: a kayaker’s heaven, the Canadian surf experience, stunning landscapes. I was perhaps a bit blasé, having already hiked the West Coast Trail and visited the Juan de Fuca trail. But Tofino and the neighbouring Pacific Rim National Park were well worth the while. For those who don’t know, it’s on the west coast of Vancouver Island, on the only real stretch of regular highway that goes out that way. I think the map tells you how geographically isolated it is better than I can.

You need at least three days, since getting from Vancouver to Tofino takes about 7 hours between transit, ferries, renting a car and doing the driving. I took four days, to make it worth the while. I tried to go bodysurfing with a wetsuit, but failed since I didn’t know how to put the gloves and boots correctly, and created too much drag when they filled with water. I spent an afternoon kayaking around Clayoquot Sound and visiting Meares Island. And I took a surfing lesson down at Cox Bay, managing to ride the whitewash within an hour. I got through a few books, and took several pretentious photographs.

My suggestions for other travellers: take a surfing lesson, go kayaking (and take a lesson if you’ve never done it, or if conditions are rough), visit Wickaninnish Restaurant for a coffee, and go to SoBo restaurant in the botanical gardens. I heard some good things about the whale watching and hot springs, but I’d seen a lot of similar stuff already so I skipped them. Rent a car; it’s just too much of a pain getting around otherwise. Food is pricy at most places, so plan on cooking when possible.

See the pictures here, or for the impatient see the slideshow (no captions).