Sun Run 2010

2009 post here
2008 post here
2007 post (with details on what the Sun Run is) here.

After running the Sun Run in 45:43 last year, I wasn't too optimistic about beating that time this year, and with good reason as it turns out, since I think I finished in around 46:35 or so, similar to my time from two years ago.

Running the half marathon last summer, and moving to the hilly land of Port Moody a month ago helped with my stamina, as I didn't feel fully out of breath at any point in the race, and I think I could have maintained a similar pace for a few more kilometers (both of these points were definitely not true the past two years), but what I lacked was speed training on the flats, and I wasn't able to maintain a fast enough pace on the long flat stretches (km 4 and km 7 in particular) - due to leg fatigue and stomach and shoulder cramps - to match last year's time.

It was a beautiful sunny day for spectators of the run, albeit definitely too warm for my tastes for running (every underpass was a sweet 3 seconds of shade...) - not that it was super warm (maybe 12C) but my Irish genes and Vancouver training lead me to prefer overcast skies and a temperature around 5 degrees for running!

In last year's sun run post, I suggested I might try a different distance at some point, which I did, running the Scotia half marathon last June. This year, I'm thinking about possibly training for a triathlon at some point, although this would require buying a bike and learning how to ride it at a decent speed, not to mention learning how to swim properly (I was never keen on putting my head in the water!) I guess we'll see, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Until next year...

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Updated to add that my official time was 46:33, good for 1,694th place, two places better than last year, despite the slower time - either people suffered due to the 'heat' or more likely there were fewer entries this year, possibly due to the delay due to the Olympics, fewer corporate sponsors, or the conflict with Mother's Day. The time was 185th best out of the 1,753 men in the 35-39 age bracket who ran the race.

T(r)olls

I remember while on vacation in Nepal, at various points around the country you would encounter (often makeshift) roadblocks, at which a toll would be demanded, sometimes by the government, sometimes not.

I was reminded of those tolls by this story in the Globe and Mail about the Government considering a purchase of the privately owned Ambassador Bridge (one of the busiest border crossings in the world). In Nepal, the tolls were demanded basically at gunpoint, although the guns were usually implicit (often only a 'voluntary donation' was asked for), albeit not quite as implicit as they are here at home.

10,000 Villlages / Story Hour at CAtO

While there's no doubt that I'm missing Timmy's blogging these days, at least Princess Monkey has been doing a great job filling in for him at Voice in the Wilderness. I enjoyed her recent snapshot of street life, involving the kind of situation most of us have probably encountered more than once - especially if we live in a city. And after my criticisms of the Maclean's article on Wal-Mart the other day, she posted a much more constructive response, which talked about 10,000 Villages - a chain of stores which I highly recommend and which was founded for the purpose of doing 'fair' trade and trying to improve the lives of the people whose goods are sold in the store (for more info, follow the link).

In honour of that post, I'm going to leave aside the politics today and just tell a somewhat humourous personal story involving me, my girlfriend and Ten Thousand Villages. It doesn't really have a point, or a moral, it's just a little story¹.

The story takes place in Victoria, in the weeks before Christmas, sometime after the turn of the millennium. Me and my girlfriend (let's call her B for the sake of this story) were in the 10,000 villages store in the Broadmead Mall for the second time in a couple of weeks and B was looking for a gift for a friend. B was taking her time and was also pausing frequently to look at a brightly coloured set of matching scarf, hat and mittens from Peru. I was getting restless, as I tend to do in any store which doesn't sell books, and was passing time at the listening station, enjoying a Putamayo 'Mississippi Blues' CD. B found a gift for her friend, but, after agonizing over it for a while, passed on buying the scarf, figuring it was too expensive or maybe impractical since she already had winter clothes.

Being the observant boyfriend that I am (good thing B doesn't read this blog - or that line would have either made her laugh or gotten her angry - depending on what things I haven't been noticing lately :) I found time in the next week or so to sneak off to the store and buy the scarf and hat (the mittens were the wrong size) as a surprise Christmas present.

This was the point at which things started to go wrong. It was a few days later and we were headed out shopping to buy something or other (groceries perhaps). Then B says, 'We have to stop at 10,000 thousand villages because I've decided I'm going to buy that scarf after all'. It's true that I'm not all that observant, but I have learned to recognize a certain tone in B's voice, a tone that tells me that a decision has been made and nothing short of all out warfare is going to change it. I may have made some token effort to dissuade her (I don't recall) but if I did, it certainly didn't work. The situation clearly called for desperate measures. As we headed out the door, I feigned having to go the bathroom and darted back inside, surreptitiously grabbing the cordless phone and the phone book, locked myself into the bathroom, turned on the tap for a little background cover noise and called the store.

The lady who answered the phone (probably a volunteer) patiently listened as I explained my predicament. Somewhat to my surprise, she was even agreeable to my request that she take the scarf and hat off the shelves and hide them for the duration of our visit. I mentioned to the lady that B, having decided to buy the scarf, was likely to be quite persistent, so she wasn't likely to be deterred by a simple empty shelf. The lady assured that me she could handle it.

20 minutes later we arrived at the store and, sure enough, there wasn't a brightly coloured Peruvian hat or scarf to be seen. I had given the salesperson a description of me and B and she spotted us right off and was lurking helpfully nearby when B went looking for answers.

'No I'm sorry we're sold out of that item'

'Yes, I know we had some of them just the other day, but they were quite popular and they sold quickly.'

'Well, I could order it, but I think even the warehouse is out of stock so we'd have to wait and see if they're getting another shipment in'.

'No I don't think the other store [there are two 10,000 villages stores in Victoria] has any either - I'm sorry.'

It was a virtuoso performance which left B frustrated, but scarfless. I silently mouthed a thank-you to the salesperson, but I felt that I should buy something as a thank-you, especially since having the scarf and hat off the shelves for the half-hour or so could conceivably have cost the store a sale. So I decided to buy the Mississippi Blues album. B told me it probably wasn't any good and that it was a waste of money but I figured she was just cranky about the scarf, plus I couldn't tell her my real reason for buying it, so I just went ahead and bought it anyway over her protests.

We got about 10 steps out of the store, and I was breathing a huge sigh of relief at having been successful with the scarf deception when B confronted me. 'Why did you have go and buy that CD', she asked, 'you shouldn't buy things for yourself this close to Christmas.' It turned out that B, having seen me listening to the CD on our previous visit, had gone out and bought me a copy as a surprise Christmas present! She was pretty annoyed that I had gone ahead and bought a copy of my own, so we turned around and went back into the store to return the CD.

We were about two steps back into the store, when I suddenly froze. Thinking we had left, the salesperson had probably put the hat and scarf back on the shelf (which was located prominently in the center of the store). I looked over and, sure enough, there they were in all their brightly coloured - and hard to miss - glory.

'What's wrong?', B asked.
'Nothing', I replied, trying to keep my voice light, while simultaneously trying to subtly maneuver myself between B and the shelf with the scarf. She looked a little skeptical, but I made some excuse and hurried her to the counter to get our refund. It was a nervous couple of minutes, but I managed to stay between B and the shelf and get her out of the store without her seeing the scarf.

Needless to say, it was hard to hold my tongue when B gave me a hard time about buying the CD, but it was all worth it on Christmas day, when she opened the present and I could see how happy (and surprised) she was to get the scarf and the hat.

The End.




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¹ I've been listening to the brilliant CD, 'A Grand Don't Come for Free' by The Streets lately, a CD which documents a few fairly routine days in the life of a typical English 'lad', so perhaps this explains, at least in part, why I felt like people might actually be interested in hearing about the random details of my life.

Books

As Justin at Flash Point Canada says,

"If this doesn't give you a chuckle, nothing will. The "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries," as selected by several staunch conservatives."

I think my favourite honourable mention is "On Liberty" by J.S. Mill - who knows how much better off the world would be if not for that fearsome work.

In other book news, apparently, I've been 'tagged' by Greg over at Sinister Thoughts, to answer a few questions about me and books. The alternative would be writing something about the latest shenanigans on parliament hill, so I think I'll talk about books as the less grewalling (sorry¹) of the two options.

Number of Books I Own

I've moved over 20 times in the last 10 years or so, so any item I consider purchasing is automatically screened for its impact on my total encumbrance², which tends to keep down my total number of books owned (especially hardcover books). I'd guess that I own around a couple hundred (Note: before any family members protest, this excludes books I own which are sitting somewhere in my parent's house).

Last Book I Bought

'City of Ember' by Jeanne Duprau. Starts well, with an intriguing premise but the ending is rushed and disappointing (not to mention not really an ending).

Last book I read

'Whisper of Glocken' by Carol Kendall. A follow-up to the Newberry Award winning Gammage Cup, it's not quite at the same level but is still a good read.

5 Books That Mean A Lot To Me

1) Systems of Survival - Jane Jacobs

I remember reading in some book (I don't remember which) a discussion of trying to meaningfully analyze the weather. If one looks too closely, trying to analyze individual drops of rain, air molecules etc., analysis is impossible because there is too much data and there are no discernible patterns to it. If you look from too far away, treating the skies around the globe as a single entity, analysis is again impossible since the changes in that one entity will appear random. Only by focussing your attention at the right level, and on the right characteristics, (tracking high and low pressure 'systems' for example) is it possible to extract any meaning or order from the skies.

Similarly, I've spent much of my time reading non-fiction trying to make sense of society and economics and politics by finding some appropriate level of analysis which lies in between the rational economic dream of constructing a tower of axiom-based mathematical knowledge on a foundation of obviously untrue assumptions and the anti rational assertion that there is no systematic analysis of human affairs possible and all we can really do to convey meaning in human affairs is to tell stories.

Jane Jacobs 'Systems of Survival' is one of my favourites because it is one of the few books I know which does in fact convincingly stake out a theory on one such source of meaning. I remember being fascinated by Nietzsche's idea of digging into the roots of why it is humans have the 'ethics' that they do and constructing a 'genealogy of morals' which he talked about in 'Human, All too Human' and how disappointed I was when I bought his later work 'Genealogy of Morals' and it didn't really seem (to me anyway, maybe I missed the point) to answer that question at all. Systems of Survival does attempt to provide a genealogy of our morals and I recommend it highly.

2) Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I can't possibly hope to summarize this book (although the linked review does a pretty good job) but aside from the content which in itself it amazing, just the way the book is written helped me realize that writing non-fiction imposes a lot fewer artistic limitations on how you write than you might think.

3) Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
As you might have been able to guess from my answers to 'last book bought' and 'last book read', I read a fair bit of young adult (or old children) literature. If I was ever to get my act together and write something more substantial than half finished stories and long winded blog posts, it would most likely be in this genre.

I read lots of adult fiction too, but whether it's just because the more innocent writing of children's books has an easier time piercing my cynical shell or just me being emotionally immature, I find that books aimed at a younger audience often have a more powerful impact on me. Case in point is Bridge to Terabithia, a deserving winner of the Newberry Medal for best children's book of 1978 (Paterson won again in 1981 for Jacob Have I Loved which is also a great book). I won't say anything more about the plot, but I really think anyone of any age would do well to read this book.


4) When Corporations Rule the World - David Korten

I talked about this book recently in this post. Aside from being extremely well written and well argued, one of the ways this book changed my thinking was to change my internal definition of species, or if not species, perhaps organism. Previously, I had only considered biological, cellular life forms as active agents in the world (allowing for artificial intelligence via computers of course). But this book made me realize that there are potentially many other active organisms (or organizations if you prefer) out there which act according to their own logic and their own agenda, perhaps somewhat but not entirely under the direction of people.

Now in a sense, this is not that different from the common wisdom that systems take on a life of their own or, as Marshall McLuhan said, that the medium is the message. But it hits home a lot more when you think of a corporation (for example) as an organism which will never die, which holds many of the same rights as people do, which can exist simultaneously all over the world, which can mobilize resources on the scale of a small country (in the case of the biggest corporations), and which lives or dies, not according to the complex set of physical, emotional and spiritual needs which humans have, but through a never-ending single minded drive to earn a return for investors (in order to grow) or at the very least earn enough money to satisfy creditors (in order to avoid dying).

Seeing the corporation as an active agent in its own right: co-existing, relying on and yet at the same time competing with people for the resources necessary for our survival, is seeing things with another dimension added.

5) Voltaire's Bastards - John Ralston Saul

There's lots I don't agree with in this book, including (possibly) the main premise that the world is suffering due to people taking an overly 'rational' approach to things and disregarding other more humanist elements of our decision making process, but there's a ton of stuff packed in here and a lot that seems dead on, from the culture of celebrity, to the climate of secrecy, to the foolishness of economic dogma, to the stubbornness of outdated methods of waging war and on and on. More than anything, this book shook me out of a phase of somewhat ideological thinking and reminded me to take a critical, questioning approach to everything, never trusting that the conventional wisdom could safely be applied in any area of human activity.


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OK, who hasn't been tagged by this yet. How about Trish, Justin, Ainge, Greg (sure his blog is about his baseball pool team not books, but what's blogging if not the freedom to write about whatever you want, whenever you want - and besides, if I recall correctly (which I'm not sure of) he was the one giving me a hard time about liking 'Life of Pi' and not making it more than a quarter of the way into 'A Prayer For Owen Meany' before giving up in boredom) and Andrew Spicer.

Don't worry if you want to dispute the tag, I won't send the meme police after you.



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¹ I'm not really sorry.

² I wonder if using the word encumbrance marks me as either a) someone in the financial/credit industry or b) someone who played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid.

Personal Note #1 - Uncle Dec

With all due respect to Spirinez, the star of my 'family and friends' blogroll is clearly my sister Trish's Journey To (and with) Faith which tracks their (her and her husband's) progress in adopting a baby girl (named Faith) from China. If you're interested in adopting - especially from China - or just interested in that kind of thing generally, I recommend it.

Fortunately (for me) the trip back from China with the baby included a one night stopover in Vancouver, so my girlfriend and I made the trip out to the hotel to see little Faith - quite an experience. As Trish mentions on her blog, I planned to buy Faith a ball to make sure she wasn't just given a bunch of 'girly' presents, but the only suitable ball I could find was a 'My Little Pony' ball. I guess we'll call that a mission semi-accomplished.

Fill 'er Up! 

Back to the Grind

The Bad: My visit to Ontario happened to coincide with weather so poor that it was (justifiably) named JimBobby's Outrage of the Week.

The Good: There are few (political) topics I find less interesting than the whole Gomery affair so it was nice that I missed all of the latest round of silliness.

I was struck by a couple of things on my first day back in B.C. (but luckily not by any of the incompetent Vancouver drivers who really have to be the least skilled in all of Canada):

1) When I first moved here, I was puzzled that Vancouver appeared to have two major daily papers, The Sun and the Province - both owned by the same company. Now I don't read either paper regularly since their web presence is laughable and the few times I have come across a paper copy I was uninspired to say the least (maybe I'm a Toronto snob when it comes to papers but I really do think the Toronto papers are much better).

But based on my observation of the front covers of the Sun and Province I have come to the conclusion that only one of them (the Sun) is actually a newspaper, and the other one (the Province) is really just the work of single photographer who hangs out at the local police precinct and writes up each day's most sensational crime in a big headline along with some quote from the relevant cops (Today's headline: "Eastside gunfight kills man, wounds another").

2) The other thing is that on my way to work I was reminded of the 'Safe Streets Act' which was passed a little while ago here in B.C. (similar legislation passed in Ontario in 2000). Readers may recall that I tend to judge legislation based on how its name compares to its intention. So the worst laws are those where the title of the act is the opposite of what the law is intended to accomplish, Ontario's 'Tenant Protection Act' being a prime example. Not as bad, but still unpromising are laws which invoke the mantra of 'safety' to provide cover for something which is not really about safety at all.

In this case, what the B.C. Liberals were after was really a 'Less Annoying Streets' act. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the law myself. On the one hand, it just seems like one more way for society to harass it's most downtrodden, desperate members, but on the other hand, the streets of downtown Vancouver can get pretty annoying at times, and certainly the actions targetted by the bill (aggressive panhandling, panhandling a captive audience, say at a bus stop) annoy the heck out of me.

Which, at long last, brings me to my point, which is that the most annoying thing on the streets right now is not panhandlers, it's the gauntlet of people making hopeful motions in my direction, obstructing my path to the bus, and indeed soliciting a captive audience at the bus stop, all in the hopes of fobbing off a free 'newspaper' on me in an attempt to position yet more advertising in front of my eyeballs. I couldn't help thinking to myself as I walked to the bus that, 'there ought to be a law' and then I remembered, there is.

So what does it all mean? Not much really, other than perhaps that I tend to be cranky the day after a vacation, when I realize how much stuff I have to catch up on...

Back 'East'

I just thought I'd warn people that posting may or may not be light over the next week since I am back in Ontario for the week to, among other things, try to draft (auction) a good enough team to improve on last year's 7th place (out of 12) baseball pool finish.

Right now the plan is to draft a more durable outfield than last year's ill-fated crew which included M. Ordonez, P. Wilson, S. Stewart and A. Kearns. Any good advice/tips should be emailed to me directly and not posted in a comment as it could be intercepted by other team owners. Bad advice / misleading tips should be sent here or here.

Empathy Gone Wild

So they changed the locks at my apartment building. But I still have my old key. Left with no purpose in life, a key without a keyhole, the same key it always was, but forever doomed to irrelevance; I sympathize and find it hard to just throw it away. But of course, as my girlfriend helpfully pointed out when I raised this dilemma, 'It's just a lump of metal'.

Heavy Snow

No that's not a description of the weather here in Vancouver where the cherry trees are in full blossom and I haven't needed a jacket (never mind a toque) for weeks now. What I'm referring to is the feeling I get sometimes trying to write a blog while watching hundreds of interesting stories and any number of bad arguments in need of correction, as well an uncountable list of topics that could benefit from further investigation pass by every single day while I'm lucky if I can find the time/energy/insight/wit/etc. to comment on more than a couple a week. It puts me in the mind of someone trying to catch all the flakes in a heavy snowfall by running around with their tongue sticking out.

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Jonathan over at No More Shall I Roam, has managed to catch a couple of good sized flakes recently, one being this post which provides the best summary/context surrounding the recent Mercer Consulting Report which ranked Canadian cities highly for their 'livability' that I've yet seen, whether in the papers or in blogs, and the other being this post from a week back (yeah, I'm slow) which provides a great look at some of the science behind global warming concerns and also explains why the earth is warmer than the moon (in case you were wondering).

Snake Eyes

Well, I rolled the dice a couple of weeks ago by booking a flight with Jetsgo to take advantage of the voucher they gave me after my last disastrous flight with them, and it looks like the dice came up with a pair of 1's as, Jetsgo has declared bankruptcy with all flights grounded immediately.

It's hardly a huge surprise, but I feel for the people who were supposed to be flying with Jetsgo today or tomorrow - that would be a real pain. For me, I just lose (I'm assuming - I'm not really too familiar with what happens when an airline declares bankruptcy and it's not one of the big airlines which just carries on like normal) have to try and get a refund from my credit card company for my reduced Jetsgo fare, and have to book a flight at normal prices. Still, it would have been nice if they could have hung in there for another month or two. Sigh.

You know if Canada 3000 hadn't gone and bought Royal Airlines a few years back, this never would have happened. Is there any industry with worse management than the airline industry - OK, besides the NHL?

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Note: Updated to reflect the most likely route to getting my money back.

Who Am I?

I'm a Mandarin!

You're an intellectual, and you've worked hard to get where you are now. You're a strong believer in education, and you think many of the world's problems could be solved if people were more informed and more rational. You have no tolerance for sloppy or lazy thinking. It frustrates you when people who are ignorant or dishonest rise to positions of power. You believe that people can make a difference in the world, and you're determined to try.

Talent: 37%
Lifer: 41%
Mandarin: 74%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

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Wow what a shocker that was :)

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Via Bound by Gravity

Paul Wells (who probably started this) has some interesting background on the guy who developed this test as well.

The World's Most Dynamic e-business Marketing, Design and Consulting Agency

Via Darren Barefoot, I recommend this hilarious send-up of vague consulting-talk laden corporate websites.

Not all that long ago I had an interview with a company with a website quite similar to this one. As it turned out, there was a reason they didn't want to be too specific about their main lines of business.

I'm Just Sayin....

This is just a quick memo to any male readers in relationships that today's date is February 13.

Good Thing They Don't Read my Blog

Longtime readers may recall that I was somewhat annoyed with Jetsgo after they royally screwed up my flight home for Christmas.

Today I received a letter from them which, while still making excuses, actually apologized for the poor service and offerred a $350 voucher valid for up to one year on a Jestgo flight. But if they'd read my Blog they would have known I could be bought for less ($200)!

At any rate, it looks like I'll be flying Jetsgo next time I head home - here's hoping for clear skies.

STV meeting, new blog

First off, I went to the Yes campaign Vancouver meeting last Saturday. Don't believe me? (see for yourself). It reminded me why I don't like politics - because it always involves a lot of interacting with other people, one of my least favourite activities. This has nothing to do with the people supporting the yes campaign, who all seem like the kind of knowledgeable, committed people who make democracy work. It's just a recognition of my personality, which is more suited to solitary pursuits than social ones.

Which leads me to my second point, which is that, partly to avoid this blog being overrun by STV posts, and partly just to get all my STV stuff in one place, I have created a new 'Vote Yes' blog.

I cross posted over everything I had posted here on STV already, and I have also added a bunch of posts including:

How did we get here? (Backgrounder) (some background info on what led to this referendum)
What the heck is STV? (an explanation of how the Single Transferrable Vote system works.
Why Vote Yes (short version) (a more concise explanation of why I support switching to STV) and most recently,
A survey of what's out there on the web relating to STV in B.C.

Superbowl Sunday

Over at his blog, Colby Cosh explains that he is cheering for the Patriots to win tomorrow (or at least limit McNabb's stats) because: "a Patriots win would be a blow to the interests of the groupthink machine, which thrives on novelty." and "If the technically outrageous Vick were playing in this Super Bowl, instead of a B-grade traditional passer like McNabb, the story would be football instead of the second coming of Doug Williams."

In addition, he seems concerned that if the Eagles win or McNabb does well, the media will take it as as a further rebuttal of Rush Limbaugh's comment (which cost him his job) that, "I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defence carried this team."

Some of his other concerns are that McNabb being friendly to the media makes them hype him too much, that the Falcon's offensive system doesn't suit Michael Vick, that the media is too critical of QB's that run a lot like Vick and too favourable to pocket passers, that the media gives too much praise to the team that wins and not enough to the team that loses and that Eagles receivers Pinkston and Mitchell are underrated.

Hey, Colby lives in a complicated world, mine is much simpler. As a lifelong Eagles fan I say, Go Eagles!!


Update: Crap. Offseason homework assignment: Clock management. Good effort though.

On a day like this...

..Vancouver housing prices almost makes sense. There's nothing like walking around in early February without needing a jacket.

Still no explanation for Toronto though.

Time for Another Great Leap Forward

"And now I tell you openly
You have my heart so don't hurt me"
- 'Dreams' - The Cranberries.

Those of you who work (or used to work) for a large organization will be familiar with the annual meeting where the higher-ups hold a little ceremony to talk to the employees about how the last year went and what's planned for the next year. In my experience with different organizations the coffee and muffins beforehand, brief video with inspiring music, sound bites from the CEO/Chairman and pictures of smiling workers, the powerpoint presentation and the closing q&a session are pretty standard.

The only difference is that this year, for the first time, I tried to keep myself awake¹ by making mental notes for my blog.

1. The only thing worse than the bland/banal music typically chosen for the inspirational video is when they choose a song that you actually like and have [had] some respect for.

2. Given 5 minutes to try to inspire the whole organization via sound bites (and allowing that the inspirational music will take up a couple of these minutes) the inspirational video rarely gets beyond platitudes such as 'we need to continue to grow', 'we have to focus on profitability', 'our customers are our number one priority', 'the industry is more competitive than ever' and (if the company is doing well) 'there's no room for complacency'. However, this time, in amongst the vague sound bites, one of the execs found time to come out and specifically state that the (rather specialized) job I do is not important. It's a good thing I don't take these videos seriously!

3. I know it's not an exact parallel, but there's still something a bit disconcerting hearing an authoritarian organization the size of a small country talk about how successful their 5 year plan has been and their plans for the next one.

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¹ Actually, as these things go, this latest one was better than most.
In amongst the motherhood statements and empty rhetoric there was actually the odd bit of relevant information, humour and insight here and there.

Predictable, Yet Sincere Thought for the Day

Merry Christmas!