On the void that binds us

Next year, same time, things will probably be somewhat different from where I am now. These are the classified reports keeping the home front informed about what's really going on in Canadia.

This blog could discuss my ski – trip up Grouse Mountain, just 37.43 minutes outside Vancouver

advertised view from Grouse Mountain

It could, I mean it was a great trip. We were skiing like true pros, or so our instructor told us, and naturally we believed him. Going up and down the slopes of the mountain like skiing was all we ever did. Sadly, unlike the aforementioned promotional picture from the top of the mountain, our view was more like this:

representative shot from the lifts of Grouse Mountain

Besides the dense fog, we had to deal with other funky weather issues. The weather report, as ever, managed to live up to its worldwide reputation: they expected less rain... and sure enough, it ended up raining nonstop.

To my occasional Dutch reader: And you think the Dutch rain is wet ?!? The Canardian Rain is Wetter. The wetness goes straight through your front “waterproof”(!= wetproof) clothing, your body, and exits through the back of your “waterproof” clothing. Hence our activities consisted of an innovative mashup of scuba diving and sliding down the hill.

Because of the lack of accurate or interesting photo material, I will postpone the skiing reports until a later date... Say when I am capable to actually ski down the hill with a camera and not break my neck. Suffice to say we had lots of fun and we're considering moving out of the game development and into professional skiing.

But, as said, my ski trip is not what this blog is about.

This blog could also discuss the new words I learned this week. I mean it just could, given the weight of these words. One of these words comes from the same person who accompanied me on (and arranged) the ski trip: co-worker and full time Brit in Canada, Steve. One of these words is “Merkin”. I invite you to click on the link, read it and wonder how we came to discuss this word. All I can say, because I don't clearly remember how, is that it involves a couple of guys and beer(s). The other word of great weight was "Gunt". I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.As you can I see, I'm getting educated in the more refined aspects of the Anglo Saxon derived culture.

Since I expect the reader of this blog to be a slightly above this level of male beer talk, this Blog won't be about newly learned words either.

In fact my original idea for this week was a common ground, a shared Dutch Canardian value, a shared source of information, quality news, the Metro.

The concept was to collect an entire week's worth of Metros (*) to give you people an accurate impression of what's playing in the Vancouverian scene. I guess one could say "i tried"... alas, the result is far from impressive. Here's the meager reapings of what I managed to extract:

• The upcoming (2010) Winter Olympics are coming to Vancouver. This happening has locals running wild and about in the spirit of pre-fun all over: if the Olympics are having a bad day, it makes news, if the Olympics sneeze, it's a breakthrough, if the Olympics fart, it's cause for a news flash update. You get the picture. Tuesday's front page news featured an anti Olympic demonstration. In unrelated news: Britney Spears got a couple of lines of paper space as well.
  
  

• On Wednesday the Metro congratulated itself, on the front page, with it's second anniversary. The age fits the maturity of the content. No gossip on Britney today.
  
  

• After leaving the Olympics alone for a day, Thursday brought the Olympics back to the front space, personified by Paralympian (physically challenged Olympic Athlete) Jeff Adams. Jeff rebuked Monday's demonstration, by stating the Olympics also bring good things (such as an overheated housing market). Britney found love in the rehab ?
  
  

• Friday's episode is called the Weekend episode. That's a bit of a stretch as one only needs five minutes or less to go through all the “news”. “Premier meets Governator” is the most important news fact according to the Metro Editors. It's not that much, but luckily there's some news on Britney Spears being very demanding and obnoxious in rehab.
  
  

Concluding: the Metro is a waste of good trees. If it wasn't for the latest news on Britney's latest burp, there would absolutely be no reason to go through the effort of obtain a Metro from a metro dispenser and wasting five minutes (or less) of your life on it.

one of the many metro dispensers improving Vancouvers Scenery

So there it is, the topic of this week's blog. Not the ski trip, not the bar adventures in downtown Vancouver but an information void. Given my obvious talent in that area, I expect some offers from the said newspaper for the role of senior editor soon...

"After every attempt at being sarcastic ask questions, ‘Was that sarcastic?', ‘Did you think that my comment was clever?'. Learn from your mistakes, and do not be afraid to ask for help to further develop the comments that you find are not sarcastic."

Sarcasm: A Beginners guide
http://www.sarcasmsociety.com/howtobesarcastic/

(*) People who actually are not too lazy to count, will notice only four metros here. People who know a (work) week contains more than four days will realize one is missing. The missing one is the result of the complexity of the metro dispensers. On Monday I was figuring out how to get a metro from one of the dispensers as my bus arrived. I had to abandon that task. The next day however, I was more lucky as I was able to spot a native performing the trick.