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My Kind of Weather

Sunny and cool, with cloud cover to give us breaks from the unrelenting light from the sun, is my kind of weather. Being naturally warm-bodied, any time the temperature goes above 23° C, I start to shut down. Spring in Vancouver is my favourite place-season, followed closely by fall in Toronto. After moving to Canada's largest and therefore best city in 2015, I came to appreciate what a winter could be like, and the summer thunderstorms that still thrill me when they rattle my chest. Overall, though, I find Toronto weather to be rarely comfortable. Anything colder than -10° C is inhospitable, and complaints should about it should not be met with jokes about how much colder it is where you are.

I very much do not miss Vancouver's rainy season, which is all of them, especially November and December. It must be said that -1° C is closest to the right temperature, something Vancouver gets to often enough in the winter months. The cooler the better for me, since thinking happens better for me in brisk weather.

Some people bemoan having to talk about the weather, and you can sometimes count me among them. I did have that reframed recently, as weather is the one thing that affects almost everybody. And thanks to a generally chaotic environment, there's a constant opportunity to learn new concepts like Colorado low and heat dome.

This is what the clouds looked like in Toronto today. Not perfect, but it gave one something to look at in the sky, at least.

This post was inspired by Jeremy Cherfas’s hosting of the IndieWeb Carnival for September.

Towel Day 2023

I still participate in Towel Day, the annual celebration of the life and works of Douglas Adams. I'm slowly creeping up on the age he died at, and while the celebrations online were numerous in amount, I didn't see hoopy froods in Toronto with their towel. I've also come to advocate for the diminishing role of anniversaries of traumatic events. At least Towel Day happens 2 weeks after anniversary of the author's passing, not the actual anniversary.

A co-worker in the western United States knew where his towel was, so we bonded over that, at least. I took my Vancouver Public Library-commissioned towel to the third space I sometimes work at (during this, my third working from home era, it's actually a second space).

A photo of a towel with a stylized whale on it, draped over a laptop.

I celebrated on the defunct social media site Twitter and made an order for a literary guide map of London featuring places from Douglas Adams' life and works by Yvette Keller. And I purchased my annual ticket to the online event celebrating his life without knowing when or if I'll watch it. I want to continue supporting such a thing, especially if proceeds go to a worthy cause.

The 2023 Moby-Dick Marathon, Put On by the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Part II

Read Part I first.


Chapter 5: The Ending

I had considered going to the overnight portion of the marathon, but resolved that if I couldn’t sleep, I’d make my way over. It turned out I slept well enough, and checked out of the hotel just in time to make the discussion with the scholars. On the first day, the moderator didn’t ask my question, but I knew I have another chance. At this morning’s discussion, where the seats were placed in the shape of a whale, I was one of the first to ask a question/make a comment. I actually chose to point out how funny Moby-Dick is, as evidenced by the laughter from the audience. That comment was well-received! One of the scholars sat next to me, and during the discussion, she mentioned the Melville’s Marginalia Online website (which was part of my question) so I took that to mean I wouldn’t ask the audience but would save it for her. So I did, and it emerged why there wasn’t a particular book listed on that website. it was because he didn’t actually own a copy (he lists two books as one book in his “Extracts” section, another she told me that I didn’t know). I asked her the meat of the question, and she seemed to think it’s a good enough question to write a short article about, and she encouraged me to do just that. She said she wanted me to keep in touch about it, even. Yet another project to add to the list!

What was the question? Well, you’ll have to read my forthcoming article to find out!

I had some time in the morning to wander around New Bedford, and after that, I ended up walking by the coffee shop next to the hotel, and had a nice brunch there. I’m sure the European café-style diner with a 25-minute wait is great, but I’ll do that next trip.

I returned to the museum just in time to read along with the ending of the book. Spoiler alert: It’s [the three chapters where the crew of The Pequod, including Captain Ahab, meet their doom]https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0133), and he says his famous line “from hell's heart I stab at thee!” (which I probably heard first from The Simpsons). The reader of those chapters, Henry Sullivan, acted out Ahab’s voice, and it was incredibly stirring as one would expect such a scene to be.

Chapter 6: Back to Boston

Without much left to do in New Bedford, I got my bag. I have social anxiety in most situations, but the desire to know something often overcomes that. If you stay through the night and read along, for all 25 hours, you get a prize package. It sounded like this was verified with a stamp partway through, because it can’t be on the honour system. I saw a couple of people with the prize pack at the hotel, but they disapeared around the cornee before I could talk to them. As luck would have it, as I was fretting about how to get back to Boston, I saw them again, and caught their eye, and asked “Got any pro tips for staying the whole time?” They had lots! Like to expect to close your eyes and open them up later and find yourself 5 pages behind. Micro-naps, one of them called it. And nobody will blame you if you need fresh air. And don’t expect to be ina conduction to drive the next day. (They’re staying overnight tonight.) One benefit, they said, was that a sleep-deprived mind will make connections you won’t normally make between one part of the book and another. Such great tips! I got the sense that they wanted to keep talking, and I wanted to keep talking to them, too, but I had to focus on how to get out of town and back to Boston.

The first Uber driver asked me to cancel and try someone else. I wasn’t about to force anybody to do such a long fare, so I agreed. That cost me $5, though. I sort of feel in a bind about that. I’m not going to lose sleep over that, and I wonder if the driver felt better off rejecting it? Anyway, I had a problem to solve, so for the next driver, I sent a message saying I’d tip generously for the hour-plus-long drive. He agreed, and it was an uneventful, and hopefully the 20% tip is generous. I’m thinking of sending more, which I still have the chance to do. I made it to my hotel for tonight, so I got what I needed.

Traveling between Boston and New Bedford was the part I was most worried about for the trip, and it actually went worse than I thought it would. I’ll need to plan this better for next time. Maybe I could help organize a ride-share if the bus situation is the same next year.

Lots to think about, lots to process about this short trip. This was one of the best ideas I’ve ever had for a trip, and despite the mishaps, I’ve been really happy with it.

FINIS

The 2023 Moby-Dick Marathon, Put On by the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Part I

Chapter 1: Moby-Dick

Talk to me long enough, and I'll bring up the subject of whales. I'm awed by the fact that the largest animal that has ever existed (the blue whale) exists today; that they live in the sea but breathe air; that the can hold their breath for 40 minutes, sometimes longer; that they swim for great lengths to feed and rest; and other facts that don't seem possible. It would surprise people a little that I hadn't read Moby-Dick, the epic American novel by Herman Melville.

Wondering how long the pandemic restrictions were going to last, at the end of 2020, I signed up for a course from the University of Toronto's Continuing Studies department as a way to motivate me to read it, and it would take place during the early months of 2021. I couldn't keep up with the assigned readings, and to this day I don't know what kind of credit I got for the course, but I finished the book. The edition I read, the Norton Critical Edition, was love at first sight. The footnotes (not endnotes!) were descriptive without being overly lengthy, pointing out biblical references I may not have caught (having not grown up in a religious family) and Shakespearean references that I had a chance of catching (whatever I would have read in high school), some quotations and facts that were flat out made up by Melville, and other words and terms that may have fallen out of fashion. It's a dense book, which some have called encyclopaedic, and that, not the length of the book is why it took me most of that year to finish.

I had known about the New Bedford Whaling Museum from a 2016 trip to Boston, and therefore knew about its yearly Moby-Dick Reading Marathon. I recorded a virtual reading marathon in the late months of 2021, reading chapter 92, titled "Ambergris" (the pronunciation of which I had to look up, and was disappointed to learn it wasn't the way French-speakers would have pronounced it). I did at least 6 takes, stopping each time I faltered, ultimately going with a take that had a minor slip in the end.

Emboldened by the removal of all pandemic restrictions and travel (minus the required vaccination, which I had covered), I signed up to be a reader at the in-person marathon in January 2023. At the very last minute, after looking up hotel rates and flight prices, I decided to accept. The only thing I was nervous about was the transportation between Boston and New Bedford, which had uncertainties due to the fact that I couldn't buy a ticket for a specific time and date. That would ultimately cause the chaos I feared.

Chapter 2: The Bus Schedule

I didn't look carefully at the special holiday-related cancellations before deciding which bus to take. The plan was to fly in on Thursday, work from the Boston HQ of the company I work for in Friday, and take a bus later that evening, settle into the hotel, then wake up refreshed for the proceedings at the museum. Working in the office was an absolute blast. We had a few more crises than I thought we would, and while I worried that we would take too much of the advantage for a social occasion, we were almost all business throughout (very pleasantly and productively so). I don't know if more gets done in person, but we learn more about each other that way, and it seemed a bit easier to figure things out together that way. I still think we do quite well with a spread out team, but one of the reasons I moved to Toronto is that I could do work trips like this, and I was brimming with joy the whole evening, despite how it played out as far as trip-planning was concerned.

What I hadn't internalized was that there was no 7 PM trip to New Bedford from Boston on that particular Friday due to the holiday schedule. There was, evidently, a 5:30 PM one, but I was blissfully eating nachos in the middle of South Station at the time. Not getting to New Bedford meant I couldn't make it for the first night of my hotel stay there. My hurried decision was to book another night at the Boston hotel I was staying at and, once I got back there, plead my case to cancel my New Bedford hotel room. After calling the hotel customer service line, and only explaining what happened, the people on the end of the line connected the dots themselves and looked to see if I could cancel despite the expired cancellation deadline. It took about over an hour of talking to at least 3 representatives, my having to call a second line (not to mention be subjected to a sales pitch on a resort getaway), to ultimately be granted, as a "one-time courtesy" (a line I know in my own field), a cancellation and rebooking. Having gotten that, and believing that I could catch a 7 AM bus the next morning, I went to bed early. I woke up at 5 AM the next morning, a Saturday, and made it with a lot of time before my 7 AM bus time only to find out that…

Chapter 3: The Uber Ride

…I had been looking at the weekday schedule. There were no scheduled bus trips on Saturdays not to mention no return bus trips on the coming Sunday. (Normally there were, but again, holiday schedule.) Just as I was contemplating cancelling the New Bedford portion of my trip did it turn out that another guy, a 72-year-old man from Japan, was also planning on going to Fairhaven (the last stop of the route) on that same trip. He suggested taking a taxi, and at first I dismissed it, but then thought "OK, how much would it cost?" So I looked it up, and it would be $77 USD. I thought: "You know what? That would be worth it." The Japanese fellow asked if he could come with me, and I couldn't think of a reason why not.

His English was pretty good, maybe a little halting, but we always got to understanding each other. Almost right away he asked to add him on Facebook. I couldn't think of a reason why not. We were about to share an hour-long ride together. The Uber driver asked if he could gas before going, and I had no problem with that. The Japanese fellow and I each got snacks, though we probably should have thought that through a little, since he wasn't too pleased about the crumbs we left. He won't see the tip he got, or the five-star rating I gave him (Uber only sends drivers averages), but he seemed pretty OK with it. The Japanese fellow offered to pay his share, and I took whatever he offered (it was more than half; I don't know if he knew I was just happy to get to New Bedford on time). He was on a day trip to Fairhaven, so I don't know how he got back. He seemed pretty resourceful to me, with his iPad mini always on and taking phone calls during the trip and looking up stuff as we went. I'm not too worried about him.

Chapter 4: The Reading

I couldn't check into he hotel until 1 PM, but left my suitcase there until I could. I actually made it to the museum at the time I had planned to arrive. I spent the morning listening to Stump the Scholars, half hoping my question would come up, half hoping it wouldn't. It didn't. The morning and afternoon went by pretty fast, with a quick meal at the Quahog Republic Tavern (a giant fish sandwich), and watched a bit of the main event, where dignitaries read from the first few chapters in front of an audience in the large room with the whaling ship. It was quite the scene for me, almost everybody looking down at their own copy of Moby-Dick, me included. Along with a couple of other things, my passport and my well-read copy of the book were the only two things I couldn't by. (It wouldn't be the same if I had to get a new copy of my own while in New Bedford.) There are a few photographs of me somewhere, with my trees-and-a-mountain-on-a-whale pin that someone, the only person who knows the reasons why I love whales that I don't talk about, bought me, reading Moby-Dick along with dozens of others. What a feeling!

My time to read, 3:30 PM, was going to be later than planned, because I had correctly sensed that the marathon was a bit behind time-wise. So I grabbed a coffee, which wasn't the smoothest move, because I forgot it can sometimes make my face break out. I powered through those feelings and kept along with the other readers until it was my time. I had practiced beforehand, not knowing exactly which section I'd read from, but knowing I had exactly 5 minutes. I had correctly guessed that I would read from the section introducing Captain Bildad, though, thankfully, it wasn't the hardest parts of that section that had the initial dialogue, where dost and thou were thrown around with wild, reckless, Quaker abandon. (Melville, though Ishmael, even makes fun of Quakers for doing that.) I had stage fright all day, and worried about pretty much all aspects, including being tall and having to adjust the microphone. I saw some people before me do it, so I knew it was possible. Just like the practice session, the 5 minutes went by like a flash. After hating every minute of the lead-up, I loved every second of reading it. It helped to know that hardly anybody would be looking at me, and the laughter would be at the content, and not the delivery.

I have a grin on my face from ear to ear. I already know that I want to do it again, and knowing what I know about the bus schedule, I'll make either fewer mistakes or different mistakes next time. I'll even practice a bit more seriously, this time conceding that this was going to be my first time and that no matter what, I'd want to improve from my previous performance. When it comes around again, I'll sign up for the lottery and if invited to read, I wouldn't hesitate to say Yes.


Read Part 2 now.

I Listened to a Lot of Music in 2022

Some things have changed since I wrote about listening to albums in 2018, and some things have stayed the same. The two biggest changes are 1) having a much better listening experience thanks to new speakers and headphones and 2) listening to entire discographies (or, sometimes, "essentials" playlists) when a new album comes out.

One of my best purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic, spending so much time working from home, has been a pair of Sonos speakers. They're compatible with AirPlay, so I can play them with any of my Apple devices and they're a huge improvement over wired headphones and laptop speakers of my previous experiences. In April of this year, as a late present to myself after a promotion at work, I bought Sony's WH-1000XM4 headphones. I did a bit of research beforehand, and went to Toronto's Bay Bloor Radio. I was one of two or three customers in the store. The WH-1000XM4 headphones were on my list of headphones to try, and the salesman gave me them to try (unprompted) and another brand. The other brand didn't fit, and the WH-1000XM4 were "on sale" for $100 off (I didn't really care), and I liked everything about them. Having good headphones has led to me listening to quite a lot more music than usual, to the point where I believe 2022 is the year I've listened to the most music. As far Last.fm knows, that's definitely true:

A chart showing how much music I listened to since 2005. 2007 was, until 2022, the year where I listened to the most music. The graph shows that I listened to almost double that last year.

Last.fm has been around for 20 years. Wow!

Another change has been to listen to an artist's entire discography when a well-received new album of theirs come out. How can I tell if an album has been well-received? It gets a favourable review in Pitchfork, that's how. That's something that has remained the same over the years. How do I listen to an artist's entire discography? One album at a time, that's how. It can be difficult to track the albums down sometimes, as Apple Music doesn't always have all of an artist's albums, though they sometimes appear on Bandcamp, and, rarely, only on Spotify. Some artists are part of a collective, such as the Wu-Tang Clan, a longtime favourite whose concert I recently attended (minus Method Man, but also plus Nas and Ol' Dirty Bastard's son). They have, collectively, a lot of albums, so I listened to all of their albums from the 1990s (including the year 2000, which belongs to the 90s) and had to take a break. I'm still on that break.

I don't wear out albums like I did in my CD-listening days. Novelty, along with catching up on classic albums (the impetus for that being Pitchfork's Sunday Review series, are my two guiding principles to listening to music. I don't imagine listening to more music in 2023 than I did in 2022, but here's to trying anyway.

Time passes, and since the year flipped over, Last.fm calculated my yearly top artists, albums and tracks:

A photo of hip-hop producer J Dilla at work, next to his album cover for Donuts, next to the album cover for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s 1999 (showing that the top track I played in 2022 was their '1st of the Month' from that album.

The top artist I listened to was J Dilla, and the top album I listened to was Donuts. No surprise there, considering that I listened to his music while reading Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas.

You’ll never guess why Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “1st of tha Month” was the top track I listened to in 2022.

Foggy Toronto

A fog wave rolled through Toronto recently, and it made for muted streetscapes and haunting photographs.

End of the Line

Yonge St. Sunshine Cutting Through the Fog

The Sky's the Limit

I can’t believe I live in Toronto

That last one is mine. Every time I pause to look at the CN Tower, the thought "I can't believe I live in Toronto" occurs to me. So I take a photo of it, post the sentiment to the now-defunct social media site Twitter, and copy some over to an album on Flickr.

It made some sense to come here in 2015, but since then, it has progressively made less and less sense to stay here. Aging (and dying) parents back home in British Columbia, family get-togethers that I can attend briefly on video, the closing of the office I moved across the country for make it increasingly difficult to remain. Remembering how much it rains in B.C., plus the prospect of packing everything I acquired in Toronto, which constitutes almost 100% of my possessions, keeps that feeling at bay. In the past month, I've signed on for another year as Secretary of the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto, and accepted the nomination for Secretary of the Garment District Neighbourhood Association, asked if there were any other nominations, and, hearing none, was elected to the position by acclamation. So I have stronger connections to Toronto than I did a year ago.

Still, everything, including going to the corner store, seems harder after the pandemic started. That must have something to do with coming down with COVID-19 in the summer and "fully recovering" and, since then, starting again to do more or less everything I did pre-pandemic. Hopefully that means more to catalogue here in the coming months.

Towel Day 2022

Another pandemic year, another Towel Day. I finally read Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion by Neil Gaiman earlier this year, and it was everything and more that I hoped it would be. It has a hard-to-fathom amount of detail about the life of Douglas Adams and the production of the series. I brought the towel I got as part of Vancouver Public Library's One Book One Vancouver out of storage again, along with Archie the Humpback Whale (whom I would nave named Noel after Douglas's middle name). I'll walk around with towel and hopefully I'll see some other hoopy froods who know where their towel is. I brought them to the co-working space, so I know where mine is.

A white towel with a blue whale and blue text that reads DON'T PANIC along with a plushy whale in a co-working space with plants.

Douglas Adams is tied with Zadie Smith as my favourite writer of all time. He, along with Steve Martin, are the heroes that aren't my dad, because they all taught me it was OK to strive to be intelligent and have a silly streak. (Monty Python, which I'm a fan of as well, taught me that but I could never fully get into them. The comedy troupe figure prominently in Neil Gaiman's book and Douglas Adams's life, as one would expect.) The heart aches when considering all of the deadlines that would have gone whooshing by had DNA lived longer.

Previously: There's a Frood Who Really Knows Where His Towel Is

A Month of Going to Blue Jays Games

I'm nominally a Blue Jays fan, enjoying watching baseball and them being Canada's only major league team. In the late 2010s, however, I realized (for the second time1) being a fan of a single team wasn't as enjoyable as being a fan of the sport. I also didn't watch much sports during 2020 and 2021, because the dread around the pandemic overshadowed the product on the field, and the quiet of the stadium coupled with the fake crowd noise only served as a reminder of the lengths we were going to in order to ignore the despair. I watched the playoffs when fans were allowed back, however, and it was fun watching the last day of 2021 where 4 games had implications for the playoffs.

When the Blue Jays announced the Leadoff ticket package, I was initially not interested. The more I thought of it, though, the more I liked the premise: It was a ticket to each home game, randomly assigned, in the truly cheap seats. There was almost zero chance of a foul ball or home run reaching that area.2 That took the decision of where to sit out of the equation, and got me in the stadium, where I could walk around wherever I wanted and watch at the standing-room areas anywhere in the stadium. So I bought the package, and went to most of the games, making it worth the price. Plus, I live a 15-minute walk away from the stadium.

The downsides were that every seat had an obstructed view. Opening night, I couldn't see most right field, and every other night, the corners were not visible. I was there for Bo Bichette's first grand slam of his major league career, but I couldn't see it go over the fence. I also have very few physical mementos of the games. There was a booth outside the stadium on Opening Day selling programs, so I bought one, but for other games, I couldn't find them at all on the 500 level. While one can bring their own food into Rogers Centre, it's a rarity, since I don't think people know that you're allowed to. One day I'll bring in a bánh mì sandwich and maybe someone will ask me which booth I got it at.

I ultimately waited too long to get the ticket package for May. I attended one of the April games with a friend, not part of the ticket package, but still in the cheap seats, and this time with unobstructed views of the field. So I think I'll try to sit in that same section when I do go to a game by myself.

Some other thoughts:

  • I was struck about how there was basically zero messaging about the COVID-19 pandemic. Nothing on the JumboTron, nothing in the PA announcements, and almost no signs of a new respiratory disease other than the employees all wearing masks (along with a certain percentage of attendees).
  • The Blue Jays put on a good show. I did catch myself wondering if there was ever, or ever will be, a Quiet Night at the Ballpark. That is, turning down the volume on the PA announcements, and no music between pitches, and no exhortations to "GET LOUD!!!" When attending with a friend, it was hard sometimes to hear him, and we can both be soft-spoken, and I'd rather try to speak over other people than walk-up songs and whatnot.

The games I did not watch: Sunday games, and the Thursday afternoon game during a weekday. It was a bit exhausting, especially after I had memorized the answers to the between-innings quizzes which didn't differentiate much, so I don't know how people who attend all 81 games can do it. I plan on going to one or two games a month from here on out.

See also:


  1. The first time was in the last 2000s, with the Vancouver Canucks. ↩︎

  2. During a game in which I was not in that section, Vladimir Guererro Jr. threw two baseballs into a section I might have been in. How did he know I wouldn't be there? ↩︎

Two Years of Sheltering In Place (More Or Less)

Over the last two months, we've seen the Omicron variant rip through the worldwide population and cause the Ontario government to close indoor dining yet again. That shutdown lasted about a month, rose tensions around the province, further elevated by the convoy of trucks that took over downtown Ottawa. Members of the convoy did attempt rolling through Toronto, but police had learned the lessons of our nation's capital and closed access to the downtown core, limiting traffic to those using muscle power and those who lived in the area. It was very eerie, and while some cheered, I was left with mixed feelings, since it felt like that was the goal all along. The federal government invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time, and I admit to being struck by how well it worked, and how quickly and easily the trucks and protesters were dislodged. I had heard all kinds of talk that they weren't leaving without a fight, that they outnumbered the police, that the police wouldn't have the guts to do it, but all that proved false after 48 hours of orderly removal of people and towing of vehicles.

Since then, I participated in a world record 14-level Ingress field, an operation which brought me back to my days in Vancouver when I would play the game more regularly. I'm currently at a 70-day streak of playing, so I guess you could say I'm serious about it again, and meeting new people as a result.

In early March, the Ontario government announced the removal of the requirement of restaurants and to ask for a vaccine passport, something I had done a few times (and noted which restaurants didn't check), and on March 21st, only a few indoor places will require people wearing masks. I will be carrying mine around with me for a while, since some places will still require them, notably events where people bought their events with the understanding that they would be sitting with vaccinated and masked people. Whenever I'm asked in a survey what a company should do about their mask policy, I say that they should honour what their customers expected when they decided to go. After that, if they want people to wear a mask, they should account for the people who didn't bring one not knowing what the policy was. The advantage of the government regulating it is you knew what to expect, and we'll soon go through a period of people, like me, being ready for whatever's asked of me. Since late February, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sucked out the oxygen of the COVID-19 news story, and it has been rare since then that it has made front-page headlines, at least on the newspaper I subscribe to.

I did find myself surprised to feel that the government's announcement of lifting the masks requirement made it much easier for me to think about the future. I have a trip to British Columbia that I'd like to make in the late spring, and my pre-pandemic mega-trip plan (Kansas City, Las Vegas, Portland, OR and Vancouver, B.C.) seems a lot more realistic now.


The March 12th, 2022 issue of the Toronto Star, with the front page showing the following: 731 DAYS five waves THE LONGEST LOCKDOWNS IN TIE WORLD 37,261 dead 3.3M CASES DON'T WEAR A MASK. WEAR A MASK. Wash your hands. Wash your groceries. five variants of concern GET JABBED TWICE. GET A BOOSTER. Dine outside. Dine inside. Drop the mask. You are here WELCOME TO YEAR THREE How we will remember the pandemic? How do we move forward, now that the dream of COVID-zero is dead?

What did I learn in the last two years? Not as much as I thought I would. We found out about a lot of companies who relaxed their rates and policies in an emergency, which led to people wondering why they wouldn't do it in the first place. Beyond practicing mindfulness meditation every day for most of it, I didn't improve much as a person, not having taken on any new hobbies or restarted any old ones.

If I stopped blogging in 2019, the pandemic got me started again. I don't think I would have read Moby Dick or even read a chapter for the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Moby-Dick marathon if it weren't for the pandemic. I likely wouldn't have organized a travel show for the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto (and subsequently swore off organizing events). In recent months I finally decided to try cooking something outside of the usual Chef's Plate meal kits, trying my hand at two personal favourites, Singaporean curry chicken noodle (somewhat of a success) and Macau-Style Portuguese chicken on rice (so far failed). The pandemic isn't over, and if this year taught is anything, it's that we have some fits and starts left. I haven't been more optimistic that we can do things in a much safer state than we've ever been since it started, at least.

Three More Months of Not Sheltering In Place

The COVID-19 pandemic continues, and since I last checked in, I travelled back to British Columbia twice, once in late October to say goodbye to my dying mother, and another for the Christmas holidays. The first trip was a no-brainer, as she only had days to live, and after her passing I spent some time in Vancouver seeing people I didn't think I'd ever see again.

I returned to Toronto, and attended 3 performances by Caribou, a concert sponsored by the Icelandic tourism industry before hunkering down again. (I would later learn that I'm related to one of the participants of the junket that travelled to promote the Land of Fire and Ice.)

Caribou at the Danforth Music Hall

The Christmas holidays trip felt a lot more optional. The Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 was starting to assert itself, and the holidays were very much centered around Mom. The family kept some traditions alive (like Pizza Hut on Christmas Eve) and retired others (like the gift exchange). I saw family friends, stomped in the snow from the rare snowstorms B.C. experienced in the lead-up to my arrival, and otherwise relaxed at the family home for a week and a half.


Toronto, as of early January, is currently in a state of lockdown where indoor dining is not permitted and many venues on their own have decided to cancel events. It still doesn't feel as bad as the early days of the pandemic, but the city is noticeably quieter than the days in November and December 2021. January has been a month of more or less sheltering in place, in part because the outside temperatures are minus something Celsius, but also because there's nothing to do again. We just got word that that may be the case until the end of the month.

Three Months of Not Sheltering in Place

Since July of this year, I've been to Hamilton twice, went to an Ontario cottage for the first time while living in Toronto, and have gone to a co-working space every couple of weeks or so. While I've mostly been working from home, I haven't exactly been sheltering in place like I did for the previous 16 months.

The two trips to Hamilton were to see the Honey Badgers of the Canadian Elite Basketball League. The second trip was my first overnight trip there, to see a playoffs game, that they would ultimately lose to the 4-10 Ottawa BlackJacks. (Yes, a team with 4 wins and 10 losses made the playoffs.) On my second trip, I stayed at a downtown hotel so that I could do a couple of things in the morning before returning home, which were to see the HMCS Haida and the Hamilton Art Gallery, getting around by bike share. On that second trip, I took advantage of the hourly GO Train to Hamilton West Harbour Station.

The cottage trip was to Kawartha Lakes, made possible by the invitation from colleagues on the board of the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto. Near the cottage is Kinmount, Ontario, the location of a failed Icelandic settlement, and the site of a monument commemorating the losses suffered by that community. The Club sells a book, Icelanders of Kinmount by Don E. Gislason, as a fundraiser for upkeep of the monument. It was a treat to sit on the side of a lake, read a book, swim, and relax in the sun at the end of summer.

The co-working space near my place has been open for the whole pandemic. I had gone once or twice pre-vaccination, but felt uncomfortable enough not to do it very often last year. I have a plan that gets me two days per-month, and back when I regularly worked at an office, it would be my "undisclosed location" every now and then just to get a break from having a(n admittedly short) commute. In the months of not going, I continued to pay, mainly to keep my membership alive, but also in hopes that it would continue operating. To my surprise, I had been banking up days this whole time, so that has made the decision to go in easier.

Restaurants aren't at full capacity, but sports venues are (I went to a Blue Jays game at reduced capacity and watched them lose to the Yankees), but you can do things if you wear a mask and follow directions. That's a lot better than I can say than 18 months ago.

The Minister (Icelandic TV Series): A Short Review

My review of The Minister, an Icelandic TV drama, appeared in the September 2021 newsletter of the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto (of which I am currently the secretary). I am reprinting it here with permission.


Poster for the Icelandic TV series The Minister

The newly elected prime minister of Iceland has a secret that could topple his carefully crafted coalition government. On the heels of promising to only take power if the electorate meets a high turnout threshold, Benedikt Ríkardsson takes his case to the people via Twitter to get ideas on how to fix the constitution. Add to the mix a scorned party loyalist and others angling for the top job, sexual tension, the conflict (and alignment) between politicians and the press, shadowy backroom figures and a mental illness that threatens to spin out of control. While the ultimate outcome seems inevitable, everything in between has the viewer on the edge of their seat wondering how the players will stay alive both politically and literally.

The TV show, broadcast on TVO twice in the last 12 months, makes reference to Icelandic history and current events and international relations, and spans 8 hour-long episodes. Starring Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Trapped, True Detective) as the prime minister, Þuríður Blær Jóhannsdóttir (The Swan) as his aide, Anita Briem (The Swan, The Tudors) as his wife, and Thor Kristjansson (The Swan, Yes-People) as the speaker of the parliament and, of course, long sweeping shots of Icelandic landscapes. TVO has even made the show available on its website to Canadian residents.

Hamilton, July 2021

My first trip outside of Toronto's city boundaries since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was this Friday, to Hamilton. The closest CEBL basketball team to Toronto, the Hamilton Honey Badgers 1, opened up their stadium to fans in the past week, so I took advantage by buying a ticket to Friday evening's game. I had a dentist's appointment in the morning, work after that, and a surprisingly busy afternoon, so I just barely made the 4:30 PM GO Train out of Union Station. My trips in previous years to Hamilton were by bus, and this was the first time by rail. I have a longtime preference of taking rail transportation when the option presents itself (I can't believe I live in Toronto, the downtown core of which is served by streetcars), so I was glad I took the opportunity this time. I wouldn't say it's the most scenic train ride in the world, but the entry into Hamilton is pretty epic, with great views on both the left and right as it winds its way into Steeltown.

I didn't have much time before the game to have dinner, so I was glad I knew my way around a bit from previous visits. I had the presence of mind to avoid a dive bar and land at Merit Brewery, which I knew had a good macaroni and cheese, though I'd forgotten just how good it was. And it's on the snacks menu! The only regret was that I didn't have time for a second beer there, as I had hoped to try their key lime sour beer.2

Macaroni and cheese at Merit Brewery in Hamilton, Ontario.

The game was fun! You had to wear a mask at all times except while eating, and seating was limited and spaced out, but the atmosphere was terrific. It was my second time seeing a Honey Badgers game at Copps ColiseumFirstOntario Centre, and it was a back-and-forth affair. My type of basketball. It concluded with an Elam Ending, where if a game is close near the end of the 4th quarter, an algorithm determines the target score, and the first team to that score wins the game. The game clock is turned off, and the ending eliminates the situation where the team that's behind in the score tries to foul to get the ball back. It's a common complaint about NBA games that, combined with the timeouts, 2 minutes of basketball can take a half an hour to play. The Elam Ending gives the team that's closely behind the team with the lead a chance to win, with an advantage to the team that is already leading. The risk is that a game ends on a free throw, but the easy solution to that is to not foul and send anybody to the free throw line in the first place. And if it does happen, the incentive is to stock a team's roster with good free throw shooters.

The Honey Badgers-Bandits game, it turned out, ended on a free throw, but in quite spectactular fashion. And controversial! (Or at least as controversial as a Canadian professional basketball game can get.) The defending Bandits player, on the free throw that would have won the game for the Honey Badgers, was blocked before it got to the rim. Initially the referees called it goaltending, but since no player seemed to have been in a game where that particular event happened, there was confusion on the court. The referees conferred, and the call stood. The Honey Badgers won!

To get back to Toronto, my plan was to take the bus, but I seemed to have forgotten that the Hamilton GO Station locks its front doors after hours. After a moment of wondering whether I'd be trying to find a hotel room, I confirmed that indeed busses were still running, and boarded the 16 bus back to Union Station. While it took the freeway initially, I was surprised (as I was on each of my other bus trips to and from Hamilton) that it took detours, driving through Oakville and on roads running parallel to the 403 and the QEW. Road signs I saw along the way: Dorval Rd., Cornwall Rd., Trafalgar Rd., Sheridan Way. I was 100% sure we were going to Toronto, with just no strong sense about what roads we'd take to get there.

Arriving in Toronto, I got my first taste of the new Union Bus Terminal. I wasn't taking the subway home (I had already decided to walk), but I would definitely have asked the attendent directing passengers on how to get there if I had.

It was a pleasant evening trip. I'm hoping to spend more time Hamilton, including an overnight stay, since it's a place in the GTHA (along with Etobicoke) where I feel like I can breathe.

See also:


  1. How can you not be charmed by a basketball team with the name Honey Badgers and such a fierce logo? ↩︎

  2. I try the key lime pie, or the key lime-flavoured version of something, at a restaurant if they have it as an homage to the TV series Dexter↩︎

Reflections on a Year of Studying Mandarin Chinese with Duolingo

The impetus for my interest in all things China came from a woman in my high school that I admired, who thought I was a communist. She was part of a conservative family, my being part of a social democratic family was a source of debate between me and her, and as a graduation gift, she gave me the controversial book The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician by Li Zhisui. Little did she know that I would devour it, and it would propel me into studying Chinese history, politics, and language in university, and stay in the country for two months (and visit for work a few years later).

When studying Chinese in my twenties, I found that the cue cards available at the time a) didn't match the textbook created by our teacher and b) didn't match my learning style. I would go on to create 4-sided cue cards (folded in half with the simplified character (which we were learning), translation, pronunciation and traditional character (which is more prevalent in North American Chinese communities) to help me memorize. I did well in those classes, and wanted to purse it post-university, but I found my interest waned as other events like starting my career and shacking up with someone taking over my time. (Also as a result, I don't have a strong sense of the history of the country from 2008 or so on, so I'm on the lookout for a book-length treatment of the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping eras.) I had intelligent things to say about China thanks to that part of my education, though.

Years later, as a way to pass the time in the COVID-19 pandemic era, I started practicing through Duolingo. It is definitely not the same as in-class participation with homework, writing exercises and practice partners, that's for sure. It's definitely fun, but Duolingo is not a strong way to learn a language. Having someone to speak with and continuously practicing writing (memorization being especially important for a language with so many characters) is essential in learning a language. I found some classes at the continuing studies department at Canada's largest and therefore best university, though I'm waiting for them to have an in-person component1, and Clubhouse (and their clones) seem to offer an interesting way to deliver lessons over voice-only medium. While I don't think I learned much beyond a few grammar points (I now know how to ask "Where in [city name] do you live?"), it did help bring what I learned in university back to me.

Today I'm celebrating a year of daily lessons, making it all the way to Diamond League. Maintaining a streak of its own sake can be motivating, and this is no different. It got me thinking of taking French lessons again (not through Duolingo) and while I don't think I'll ever return to China, I'm going to continue my long-held interest in the country and its people.


  1. I'm not holding my breath. ↩︎

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