Of the olympic torch relay, canadian patriotism and oh yes, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!
It’s finally here.
In 2003, Vancouver won the bid to host the XXI Winter Olympics. I didn’t really care. I had never really followed the olympics before so it didn’t really excite me. I also didn’t realize the magnitude of this event. In fact, nothing Olympics had really phased me until I went downtown for opening day of the games and realized two things:
(1) HOLY COW WE’RE HOSTING THE WORLD.
(2) HOLY COW THOSE SEVEN YEARS WENT FAST.
So it begins. I have no tickets for any of the olympic games that are happening MINUTES AWAY FROM MY HOUSE because I had pretty much forgotten this would happen until up until maybe, two weeks ago? when they started closing off roads. I also thought I didn’t care about sports, especially winter ones since I pretty much detest snow, but apparently, Canadian pride changes your taste in things.
Internet, I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but… I AM SO STOKED FOR THE HOCKEY GAMES. (And P.S., Canada? YOU BETTER NOT LOSE. I don’t even know the first thing about hockey, but I do know that I want you to kick the world’s ass. No pressure or anything.)
Car accident paparazzi
4:15PM: This just happened.
It’s not officially spring…
… Until the cherry blossoms show their pretty little faces. Which means, hellooo spring!
Oh how time flies
Seriously. It’s almost the end of March. THREE WHOLE MONTHS INTO THE NEW YEAR. How did this happen? Where did the time go?
People are getting ready to graduate, losing weight for swimsuit season, considering summer plans and leaving the house without winter coats. The sky is getting bluer and bluer, the flowers are starting to come out (tulips!) and you can feel the weather changing. We’re leaving behind the season that began 2009, and entering into a new one that is completely foreign to this year.
Vancouver dog charged with identity theft, destruction of public property
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Vancouver, B.C.—The Winkey dog has struck again.
Despite his baby-faced attempts to worm his way out of trouble, Winkey (born Sir Winkey Tiggles the Third) Wood was officially charged and sentenced for identity theft and destruction of public property on March 1st, 2009. However, shortly after serving the first half of his sentence, Wood escaped.
Residents and regular readers are warned to be careful: In 2007, he was publicly charged with grand theft of a vegetable item. Previous to that, he was trialled for murder (“THE CROW HAD IT COMING!”, Wood claimed) and following the 2007 incident, vandalism, battery and destruction of public property.
Day 1: Grace in Small Things
- The uni-ball vision exact pen.
One could search one’s entire life for the pen that fits like a glove (metaphorically-speaking, of course, as I’ve yet to come across the pen that fits like a glove, but while we’re at it, wouldn’t that be such a neat idea if you happened to be writing outside in the cold?)—Luckily, I’ve happened to find true love in this pen. - Bagels.
I could wax poetic on how much I love bagels, but I will spare you the unholy pain and just say this: they’re AWESOME. My favorites (aside from the trashy, squishy white ones you buy at the airport minutes before just making your flight) are Mount Royal’s whole wheat bagels and Alvarado Street’s sprouted wheat onion & poppyseed bagels. - Waking up to the sun filtering into my bedroom.
The weather man said it would be sunny from Sunday to Wednesday. My my my Vancouver, how the sun becomes you! It’s so nice to wake up to the sun playing with my bedroom walls. - Soft, feathery vocals to summery soft music.
I don’t know what to call this genre of music, but I’ve recently been able to truly appreciate how lovely it is. Examples: Knock Knock – Lenka, I’m Yours – Jason Mraz, 1234 – Fiest, Don’t let me fall – Lenka, the first 2/3rds of Lovebug – Jonas Brothers. - The Nanny.
I have warm memories of watching this show with my mother growing up, and I’ve recently started going through the old episodes again. It’s highly unrealistic in many ways, but still puts a huge grin on my face, even 12+ years later. I’m still trying to replicate her laugh!
Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in 365 days of Grace in Small Things.
Chanel plays tortured artist, turns pain into art
For what feels like an eternity but may actually be a week or so, Vancouver has been playing host a meteorological phenomenon known as an inversion. You may not know what an inversion is. That’s okay; it’s also known as the second ring of HELL.
Official definition of “inversion”:
In meteorology, an inversion is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to a temperature inversion, i.e., an increase in temperature with height, or to the layer within which such an increase occurs. A layer of warm air sits on a layer of colder air, slamming the cold down like a meat locker door, making life perpetually cold, damp, foggy and supremely unfair. (You’ll see why in a second.)
Snow pup
One thing an appalling amount of snow is good for? Pictures!
The Starbucks Delusion
I know I literally write about this at least once or twice a year, but it is ASTOUNDING how much I can get done if I really start my day before 9, 10, or 11 am.
Normally, I prefer to wake up later and just work later into the evening, but this getting up early and not being dead tired (a result of going to bed earlier the previous night) really is quite appealing. I’ve been meaning to make the switchover from night owl to One Of Those Adult People, and now I may have just stumbled on newfound motivation to do so.
On a somewhat related but mostly unrelated note…
This morning I got up at A Respectable Adult Hour, dropped my brother off at school in North Vancouver and came home, stopping at the Granville skytrain station on my way back to grab a grande steamed soy with hazelnut from Starbucks. Normally I don’t really indulge in such things, but since I was freezing and it was still a ways home, I indulged.
You know, I felt so trendy, walking the streets of downtown Vancouver with a Starbucks drink in hand. Waiting at every pedestrian crossing, I was surrounded by sharply dressed individuals all off on their morning routines. They had gotten up early too! They were trendy and well dressed too! They were all enjoying their hot morning beverages too! I was one of them! I was trendy too!
Well, okay… Honestly? Maybe I was mostly trendy. I might have forgotten to comb my hair or put on make up that morning, and there was a good possibility I was not wearing Burberry and Armani like the rest of my streetwalking companions—I might have left the house in an oversized red University of Arkansas sweater and brown sneakers that clashed with everything else I was wearing. Maybe.
Hey, it was fun while it lasted!
A not so merry christmas photo
If only I could describe to you the picture of chaos that was going on before, during, and after the shooting of this photo. I’ve mentioned Winkey’s affinity for public displays of aggressiveness towards other dogs before, but this was truly the first time his antics have taken place against the backdrop of, “FREE DOG PHOTO WITH SANTA WITH DONATION TO ANIMAL SHELTER!”
Even Santa was a little afraid, and that overweight dude slides himself down chimneys every year.
Tight squeeze, cool breeze, now you’ve got the shiveries!
“And where are you from?”
“Vancouver, BC… in Canada”
“Oh, Canada! This must be warm for you.”
“Well actually…”
Red, yellow, orange
There are some crazy colors going on outside right now.
And we’re supposed to be good at hockey
From the front page of The Vancouver Sun:
The Canucks are the longest-running melodrama in our city. In 37 years, they’ve never won a Stanley Cup and have been to the finals only twice. Yet we, the fans, have never lost the faith. Forever Faithful—The Canucks Movie pays tribute to us, their diehard boosters.
Iain MacIntyre
I’m no hockey fan or sports genius, but even I know enough to realize that playing for thirty seven years and never once winning is a little sad, and not in the boo hoo kind of way, but more in the “wow, this hockey team is an embarrassment to our city” kind of way.
Wanted
Setting: Subway – 3490 Kingsway in Burnaby, around 7pm, Saturday October 25th.
You: Henry, from Czech Republic, white iPhone, bacon and chicken sub on whole wheat bread with ranch dressing, no olives. Lives just off Kingsway. Party Saturday night. The lady behind the counter said I was pretty and you agreed. You told her you were too shy to ask me my name, so I told you instead.
Me: Chanel, half Fijian, quarter French, quarter British, no iPhone present, veggie sub on whole wheat, Italian dressing, with olives. Lives by Killarney. Was heading to North Vancouver.
They say strangers are friends you just haven’t met yet. Hi. :)
One man’s trash…
… Is another photographer’s treasure.
A couple weeks ago, I met Marissa for breakfast at the Naam and a little photoshoot. These pictures are from the Commercial drive area of Vancouver. It’s definitely an interesting part of the city; full of culture, art, and organic foods… It’s also a bit of a hippie/drug area, depending on what part you’re in.
Like most neighborhoods in large cities, some parts are nice, and other parts, not so much. Guess which parts we took pictures of?
This entry is all over the place. Kind of like your mom, i’d say, except I don’t really make jokes like that.
I took these photos in the middle of September, but never really got around to processing them until now. They were taken in English Bay on an unusually warm, sunny weekend, and true to form, the beaches of Vancouver were a little full while the rest of Vancouver was… also a little full.
That’s Vancouver for you: The slightest inclination of good weather (GOOD WEATHER? WHERE?!), and everyone and their pink swarovski crystal studded Jack-A-Poos are out of the house. You can’t make the stuff up, folks. Not even a bit.
Of hot weather, outdoor weddings and inappropriately placed mosquito bites (now with survival tips!)
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world, but the last two days in Vancouver have been absolutely brutal, temperature-wise. Most locals around here have spent the majority of June whining about the lack of summer and then all of a sudden, SHAZAAM!, 100 degree weather two days in a row.
Well. Let me be the first person to tell you that I hope it rains as soon as possible, because this face-melting heat is HELL. As far as I know, Canadian homes this side of the country aren’t even equipped with air conditioner—which means a whole lot of fans, cold showers, running through sprinklers and sprawling out in dark, cold places are employed as heat-diffusing techniques.
C’MON NOW. If I wanted to live in an oven, I’d move to the south. I’m a 60 degrees sunny day kind of girl. This is why I live in Vancouver. I love the rain, I love the sun, but I hate extreme cold and extreme heat. How about some moderation, weatherman?
According to our local newspaper, summer is the most dangerous time of year. After experiencing two full days of this said “summer”, I’m afraid I will have to agree—and since I feel especially fortunate to have survived the past few days, I feel that it is my duty as an upstanding citizen to share my newfound summer-surviving knowledge with the rest of the world. Behold:
The things you wait in line for
A couple friends and I headed downtown this evening to attend The Cheaper Show (eighth installment), a one-night-stand art show featuring 150 artists and 300 pieces of original artwork. A bit about the show from the official website:
On June 21st, 2008, the eighth installment of The Cheaper Show series will take place in the Gastown district of Vancouver, BC.
The concept of The Cheaper Show is very simple: 150 multi-disciplined international artists presenting 300 pieces of art, each priced at $200 for one night only. Far from being an ‘art sale,’ each exhibiting artist consciously makes a sacrifice by selling their work for less than its potential value. This creates united support for the event, the arts community, and an opportunity for this show to take place in an environment that is accessible to everyone. In turn, many walk away with sales, exposure, commissions and gallery representation, as well as having an opportunity to connect with peers on an even playing field.
As it turned out, this was a popular place to be tonight; well over a thousand people attended. The show opened at 7pm and by the time we’d arrived (8pm) the lineup to get in was several blocks long. We waited in line 45 minutes only to get about 1/4 of the way to the entrance before we decided to go eat and try the line again at 10.
And this is why I take public transit everywhere
On the way home from Surrey tonight (DON’T EVEN SAY A WORD), a girl sitting across from me on the Skytrain started a conversation with me. It began with a comment about a fighting couple that had just gotten off and ended with the story of how she had just broken up with her boyfriend of twelve years.
They have two kids together. She always paid for things like groceries and utilities. He always paid for things like the TV and the barbecue. Guess who got what.
Breakups are always so messy. The Dividing Of The Stuff makes it all that much harder.
But damn, 12 years? And two kids?
It kind of made me realize, shit, the things we go through for happiness.
Now I understand how some americans can think we still live in igloos.
More reasons why I hate Alberta and never wish to go back:
- Sub zero temperatures during the winter months: i.e., spending the greater part of the last 72 hour weekend in -45 degree temperatures with WINDCHILL. Do you know what that means? It means that no matter what you wear and no matter where you are, you’re still cold.
- Bodily complications related with sub zero temperatures: frozen noses after being outside for 10 seconds, fingers that don’t work after 1 minute, frostbitten toes after 10 minutes, death after 20 minutes. Oh, and dare I forget the breathing problem? The air is so cold that my windpipe refuses to let it pass to my lungs: “Hmm, I see that Chanel is unwittingly attempting to kill herself by disguising liquid nitrogen as oxygen and hoping it passes to her lungs. REJECTED.”
- Did you know that salt doesn’t work as a de-icer after a certain temperature? Did you know that there are large metropolitan cities that live below that temperature cut-off for several weeks or months? ME NEITHER. They can call it whatever they want to to fool unwitting tourists, but I’ll tell you how it is: HELL. These places on earth aren’t “great ski locations” with “beautiful powder” or “incredibly scenic” – It’s a ploy the city comes up with to lure people into their death trap. BE YE NOT FOOLED.
Sunshine: Now back in style!
From the front page of The Vancouver Sun’s Weekend Review:
Sunshine is making a comeback.
I know precisely when it went out of style, too—In fact, I believe it was somewhere between “snow”, “sunsets at 4pm” and “hell”. No joke. I’m more than ready for summer.
Asians vs. First Nations – The battle for our city’s olympic image
Place yourself in the shoes of the Vancouver Olympic Committee for a second.
They’ve been getting a lot of negative opinions lately. I mean, first there was the whole debate about actually having the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and then there was the (ongoing) concern of how much it would cost, and then there was (and still is) the related mess known to Vancouverites as “that huge hole on Cambie that makes everyone avoid the street altogether and creates millions of dollars in losses for Cambie street business owners”.
But let’s forget about that. Today we’re talking about Vanoc’s newest unveiling: The official mascots (yes, mascots – the best place on earth clearly deserves more than one!) for the 2010 Winter Olympics. (A big thanks to Kaiti for suggesting a topic I couldn’t resist!)
When it came to creating a visual for Vancouver’s culture, I don’t doubt for a moment that the Vancouver Olympic Committee was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Why? Well, the reason is fairly obvious: Vancouver has no singular ethnicity or culture. You can find nearly every ethic background represented in this city, so what do you do?
I think Pete McMartin hit it right on the head in his column yesterday when he said, and I quote: “And, as usual, Vanoc went native, and heavily so, since it believes that the only culture worth promoting to the world is first nations. That, or it’s the most marketable.”
What are your daily pleasures?
With life being as insane and all-demanding as it is, few of us take time to stop and “smell the roses”, as it were. What are you thankful for? What little things do you appreciate the most? What are you daily pleasures? (A spin-off idea inspired by Regina’s latest post.)
For me, the list looks something like this (in no particular order):
Doing nice things for others. I love to do nice things for others. Sometimes it’s going the extra mile, sometimes it’s doing a random act of kindness, and sometimes it’s doing something that everyone should, by default, be doing, but either way, I love to do nice things for people. I don’t even have to know them—they could be complete and utter strangers for all I care. It doesn’t matter.
My neighborhood. I love my neighborhood. It’s nothing special, just your average nice east side neighborhood, yet it has almost everything I need within walking distance – ice rink, track, gym, swimming pool, community center, public library, two grocery stores, two Chinese restaurants, a bakery, two Starbucks (though I don’t ever go there, it’s helpful when I want to meet up with someone there), several forests and parks, etc. I love it.
Walking my dog. Walking my dog around my neighborhood is among one of the most relaxing and enjoyable things ever. He likes it, I like it, we take almost the same route every time, but it’s delightful. Walking, running, or just about any other form of exercise (with the mp3 player, of course) is also a surefire “pick me up” – endorphins can definitely account for part of this daily pleasure.
Dear mall and everyone inside it,
I don’t know if you’ve checked the calendar lately, but it’s only mid-November – A bit early to be decked out in Christmas gear and playing Christmas tunes, don’t you think? Halloween just finished and we still have a month and a half to go. I don’t appreciate you trying to prematurely release my Christmas spirit. IT’S NOT TIME YET, DAMMIT!
Love,
Chanel
PS – I’m one whole year older today, and still not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
Well then, this explains everything!
From the Vancouver Sun’s article on the Top 100 surnames in the Lower Mainland:
#77 – Wood (664 entries)
An English and Scottish last name, Wood almost always denotes someone who lived in the woods, or who worked as a woodcutter or forester. However, a secondary origin for the name Wood is a nickname for a crazy or violent person, an interpretation derived from the Middle English word ‘wod’, meaning mad or frenzied.
Dear Vancouver City Workers,
I know y’all have good reasons for forcing us to collect 87 days worth of garbage in our garages and keeping us locked out of our libraries, city golf clubs, cemeteries and community centers, but enough is enough.
Go back to work.
Love,
Chanel
PS – We only have so many freezers. BODIES NEED TO BE BURIED.
I love you, Vancouver
Vancouver has topped the Economist Intelligence Unit’s list of the world’s most livable cities once again.