Hard Times?

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Raoul

It’s been a tough couple of weeks  – traveling takes its toll and life carries on in the big city even when you are away.  It’s also hard to have your heart broken a couple of times in (relatively) quick succession.

It got very hot in NYC in a short time – although the humidity has yet to kick in and make it unpleasant – what happened to spring?  Last Monday it was raining and felt almost cold enough to snow, by Friday it was sitting on the terrace weather.  It’s been 80 degrees plus (26 Celsius plus for everyone who doesn’t live in the USA, Liberia, or Burma/Myanmar) for the last four days.  As long as there’s a breeze, it’s very nice (reminds me of Kauai), but I wonder if these weather patterns with above normal temps will stick around through the summer and make things unpleasant.

But hey – life is still pretty good in the big picture.  I could be a dog trying to figure out what this sign from Narita is telling me.

dsc00279

Posted in Life | Leave a comment

Ninja Obama

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Raoul

DiD US Presidential Election 2008????????.

This is why I love Japan and Japanese culture –  the picture of President Obama with a katana and wakizashi is worth ten thousand words of description of cross-cultural strangeness.

How did William Gibson find this?

Posted in Travel, WTF? | Leave a comment

Oregon – 48th of 50

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Raoul

I’m traveling to Portland, OR next week to meet with some clients and it will be the first time I’ve had a chance to visit Oregon.  Seems strange to me, since I’ve always heard great things about Portland and the areas around it and I’ve been to all its neighbouring states.

Oregon will be the 48th of 50 states that I will have visited, so after that I just have Mississippi and Alabama, which I should be able to check off together in a short trip (even though the south scares me more than most places).

In Canada, I’ve been to every province and territory from Quebec west, so I just have the Atlantic provinces to cover.  I’m hoping to get to some of them this summer.  I’ve been at the airport in Kuujjuaq a bunch of times, but just visiting the airport doesn’t count in my book, so I really need to count Nunavik and Labrador as separate regions if I want to cover all my options in Canada.

Posted in Life, Travel | Leave a comment

Wisdom from Marcel Proust

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Raoul

I can’t pretend to have read all of “In Search of Lost Time” (although I do have “Swann’s Way” sitting on my to-read shelf), but I did just finish “How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Alain de Botton and was very taken by the following passage he quoted:

“There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or even lived in a way which was so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. But he shouldn’t regret this entirely, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man – so far as any of us can be wise – unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be reached.  I know there are young people … whose teachers have instilled in them a nobility of mind and moral refinement from the very beginning of their schooldays.  They perhaps have nothing to retract when they look back upon their lives; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile.  We cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves by a journey which no one can undertake for us, an effort which no one can spare us.”

 

 

Very true.  Who knows what truly made us the way we are – good or bad, happy or sad – so why waste time on regret?  We are the sum of our experiences.

Posted in Books, Life | Leave a comment

The mobile phone as self-inflicted surveillance • The Register

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Raoul

The mobile phone as self-inflicted surveillance • The Register.

The level of surveillance in the UK is out of control – I was at the railway station in Arnside when I was over for my mother’s party and we counted at least 8 CCTV cameras on the platform.  This is for a place that probably gets 4-6 trains a day and I’d be surprised if more than 100-200 people a day use it.

I really don’t know what led to this craziness but it bothers me and I see the CCTV culture coming over to the US too.  Let’s be clear – with very few exceptions, this does not stop or prevenet crime, it may allow for the identification of the culprits after the fact.

I’d far rather live in a place where time and energy was put into stopping crime, rather than just recording it as it happens.  New York City, surprisingly, is an object lesson of how to do that and it’s mostly about getting more police on the streets at any one time.  I feel safer in Manhattan at 2am than I do in many English towns and cities, and that’s a terrible shame.

Remember that the people who tell you “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” are the same people who stop you taking pictures of police, or who want to hide their own activities.

Posted in Life, WTF? | Leave a comment

Trip to Grange-over-Sands

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Raoul

I got back from the UK on Tuesday afternoon after a flying (no pun intended) visit to the UK for my mother’s 70th birthday dinner (although she claims it was the annual old lags dinner that just happened to be a couple of weeks after her birthday).  After almost missing my flight in Newark on Thursday night – thanks NJ Transit – I flew via Frankfurt to Manchester. 

Mick and Helena came over for the dinner as well and we went walking up Gummer’s Howe on saturday morning and then had lunch at the Masons Arms.  Two beers at lunch then morphed to a few more beers at the truly awful Commodore Hotel in Grange, drinks before and during dinner, etc. etc.  I suppose the boys (and girls) there are more used to this kind of thing.

More later,  but here’s a pic from Arnside (across the estuary from Grange)

cimg15701

Posted in Family, Friends, Life | Leave a comment

Bold-face names?

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Raoul

Chey and I made the gossip column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune last weekend, but I’m not going to link to it because she asked me not to 🙂

Nothing terrible or salacious at all – just a funny run-in we had with a Ron Burgundy wannabe at the W.

Posted in Family, Friends, Life | 1 Comment

Travel, travel, travel

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Raoul

Lots going on in Q4 which leaves me little time to update.  Had a great weekend in MSP with Chey and a crazy week so far since getting back.

Heading to the UK this weekend for my mum’s birthday.

Posted in Life | Leave a comment

Van at the Beacon

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Raoul
The one and only

The one and only

I had planned to come back and write about the concert on Wednesday night, but work and travel got in the way until Chey reminded me.

What can I say?  This is a show that I’ll remember literally for the rest of my life.  I had agonized whether it was fiscally responsible to spend $300 plus Ticketmaster tax on a show, but I can say that I would quite happily have paid 5-10 times that.  In fact, it was probably good that I went on the second night, because if I had gone on Tuesday I would have been scalping tickets for Wednesday.

The Beacon has fantatsic sound and I had a great seat – about 15 rows back.  The show started at about 8:10 and he went right into Northern Muse (Solid Ground).  I didn’t write down the setlist, but it’s here if you are interested.  Van doesn’t really interact with the audience, but he did seem to be having fun which I can’t really remember from other shows.  The arrangements of all the songs – from the “classics” and “rarities” first set to the Astral Weeks set were different enough to be interesting and challenging, but still recognizable.  Not like when Dylan played Duluth and it was hard to recognize anything except for the odd lyric.

It seemed like the audience was older and more suburban and it took a while to warm up (seriously, who pays this kind of money for tickets and then chats through the first set and shows pictures of their kids and vacations to each other on their iPhones? – I should have kicked your asses for disrespect).  But the setting and the music won everyone over and by the time Van and the band played “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, followed by “Caravan” and “Comfortably Numb” it was like a religious experience.

I’m not eloquent enough to describe “Astral Weeks” in words.  It’s the best album ever made, bar none, and to think that I’d get a chance to see Van play it live over 40 years later and to realize his voice and delivery are still as good …..  All I can say is get the CD and listen for yourself.

The show was filmed – I wonder if they’ll use the shots as infill for the Hollywood Bowl DVD or whether it will be released on its own.

As we left, I heard someone (another Brit) say “well, now I can die happy”.  I’m not ready to die, but I am a lot happier having seen this show.

(picture lifted from the Beacon Theatre web site)

Posted in Life, Music | Leave a comment

Skiing at Hunter

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Raoul

I went skiing to Hunter mountain yesterday with Jen and although it was icy, I had a lot of fun.  It’s a little ironic, because today I woke up and it’s snowing hard with 3-4″ of accumulation in the city and there must be nice new snow further north.  The news would have you believe it’s the end of the world – the Weather Channel is calling it a “Mega Storm“- which seems a little alarmist.  I don’t think anything with less than 2-3 feet of snow counts as a mega storm.

I had never been to Hunter before and it’s a small, decent mountain.  It’s only about 2-2.5 hours drive from the city, so it’s pretty convenient.  I’m spoiled by Portes du Soleil with 230 lifts and 650km of runs, so there’s not a whole lot in North America that can compare.  It’s interesting to compare costs as well – a one day pass is 39 Euros which is right around $50 at today’s exchange rates.  It wouldn’t be fair to compare Hunter and their prices to P du S, but Whistler is the largest area in North America and their pass is $89 CAD plus 5% GST = $73 USD.  Vail is now $97!  I guess I’ll be skiing in France next winter if I want to go for a week.

I started pretty shakily on the skis, but by early afternoon was feeling pretty comfortable and I skied my first ever black runs, and even a double black (by mistake!).  Conditions were icy – I was told they had 1″ of rain on Friday which then froze overnight – but I felt OK with it and only fell twice all day.  I’m glad Jen was there to encourage me out of my comfort zone, otherwise I probably would have stuck to blues.  It seems to me that I’ve been on blue runs in France that were tougher than the black runs at Hunter, but that may just be hindsight.

I noticed that many (if not most) people my age were wearing helmets on the mountain – probably something I should do too.

Posted in Friends, Life, Travel | 1 Comment