International Festival Report on the way

It's been a long day-- short on sleep and long on work with plenty to say about the international festival. I got a bunch of calculations to go through and I'll report in on that within the next few days. Learned plenty from the event despite having mixed results. Am I sounding vague? But of course, I'm saving the interesting analysis for the next post! Unlikely that the people that helped out are reading thus but many thanks to the lab members, my roomie and the volunteer that worked with us today.

Details to follow. Cheerio.

Oh and by the way...

It's been a while since I've updated. So many things going on that I haven't had the chance to do much updating as of recent. So today I was preparing some food at my friend's kitchen in a dorm with a bunch of other friends. This crowd of Japanese people come in all of a sudden and there was this one girl that I ended up just chatting with... turns out that she did a 1 year exchange in UBC and we got all riled up talking about UBC and Vancouver. Cool to boot too!

Had my hands in a smoked salmon cream cheese mix at the time and couldn't whip out my cell phone to exchange contacts. Was going to wash up but ended up telling her to contact a mutual friend we knew to get my info (don't even know if he still has my contact). Was in the process of washing my hands and the guard man came and interrupted us because we were talking too loud and they had to leave and I didn't end up getting her contact! Nooooooooooo! Bummer.

Oh and by the way... I've just been spending the last 2 weeks prepping for an international festival happening tomorrow where I'll be putting out a Canadian booth selling "Canadian food" and I have lofty goals to head out to France for a conference if I can get some results in 1 month.

Sigh... back to work, got posters to finish off making. If things go well, I'll be selling food for 400! Pictures to come later.

Why an Athesist Cares about Religion

I saw this video on YouTube just today on why Atheists and Agnostics should start keeping track of what is going on in the religious world. We are seeing people of religion influencing what others can or can't do. I ask you, who is it in the States are against stem cell research? Where does Conservative party in the States get a significant support from? Who is against the teaching of evolution in school? What significant faction opposes same sex marriage?

The point of these questions is not whether if they are correct or not, but it is important to realize that there is an institution behind this... and I'm afraid that this institution is not entirely backed up by rational thought. It's time to name names here and now, a considerable amount of policies are being driven into politics by Christian organizations.

I am not characteristically against religious organizations; I am more than happy to co-exist with the beliefs of others-- my friends can go ahead and pray before eating a meal, tell me that you can't eat pork or beef, whatever, it doesn't bother me. I have plenty of friends of different religious backgrounds. In Canada, I have Christian, Hindu and Islamic friends. We get along fine; it's not like we go jihadic when we sit down together for lunch. Unfortunately, there are groups of people that do not think that way and these groups have the influence to change the laws that affect people that aren't of their religious denomination. Is that right? I don't think so.

"Democracy is about way more than majority rule. Democracy is about minority rights, individual rights, restraints on power." -- President Clinton, interview on Fox News after he smacks down Chris Wallace (the host) down for partisan questioning (an interview very much worth watching by the way).

Since when do Christian (or other religious) groups have the right to impose their way of thinking on to other people? We have a group of people telling others what is right or wrong and trying to legislate that into law. This is a different ball game because there are active groups of people out there affecting the way other people go about their lives, especially when the affected group isn't doing anything to affect the active group's way of life.

Why should being Islamic threaten Christians? Is it right to for say Christians to legislate a ban on Islamic religion (even as a way of life)? Suppose even that Christians held a majority and "democratically" had the power to do this sort of thing, does is make it right still? No! And that is why democracy is just as much about minority rights as it is about majority rights. Because in the big picture of the world, we are all minorities. There are more non-Christians in the world than there are Christians and simply by majority rule it would be just as fair to legislate against them. But oh wait, the world is divided into countries and such, but the idea is still just as valid.

Religious group's have an asymmetric way of interacting with broader society; for example what if I made a deal to allow a religious organization to have their way with no stem cell research, but I want religious related activities in schools banned because, say other people might find it offensive.

You know what? There is no way that is going to happen. I've never seen any religious organizations make any concessions because they believe they are right and they want it their way. And the only time I've seen religious discourse happen is when they want to come talk to you and persuade you to let them have their way.

That's the asymmetry. If you have the right to change the way other people go about their lives, then others should have the right to influence the way you go about your life. This of course is an idealistic way of thinking-- in the sense that we live by fair rules (ie. what you can do, I can do). The reality is that the world isn't 100% fair, but we try to live by these ideals. If we don't, then all bets are off and everyone is going to be as unfair as possible to get their way... and you know what? That's also "fair" in a perverse kind of way... but this system would still be moral, in a different way where I described in a post I made more than a year ago. Summary point, Christian groups should also be willing to accept the influence of other groups if you are going to try and influence how others should be. As of this writing, I have yet to find much evidence of this happening.

I am sure that you and I can predict the headlines in the news if I actually made a deal as a above: "I'll let you have your way with no stem cell research, but I want religious activities in schools banned." We'd all hear how this would be called "religious discrimination," fine, so what do you call it and a religion discriminates against other people? So what about people or ideas not related to religion but challenged by religious groups? "Persecuted by religion?" I don't think we have a formal term to describe this and I think this is the problem--the problem is that a set of phrases don't exist to describe this persecution of ideas by religion. If a problem cannot be well defined, you're not going to have a very good chance of any sort of logical discourse (assuming that "logic" is a valid school of thought for this kind of "discourse"). But it's time to start the discourse because religious tolerance is coming to an end and ironically we are starting to see that it is those that are religious that are intolerant. I cannot tolerate the intolerant.

It might seem that I'm hitting hard at Christians, but that was not the point of this essay. I don't harbour any hate of them-- it so happens to be what I am the most versed in terms of what is going on, but the argument can be extended to other religions. If that is one things you should walk away from this, it is the broader picture of implications.

I am agnostic out of politeness (agnostic being that I have no belief or disbelief of supernatural religions) because I believe it's fine for people to believe anything they want so long as they are civil. I even entertain religious conversation and was perfectly fine with people telling me that they're happy to be religious. I've got no problem with people being happy, but when the things they do starts causing trouble to other people, it's time to take a look at what's going on and I mean so in a rational kind of way. Unfortunately, rationality and religion doesn't seem to co-exist and I have to make a stand for it and many others are starting to do likewise.

Religious and world peace is possible-- I've lived in an international dorm.

The simplest questions are sometimes the hardest

One of my labmates has a presentation this weekend in Korea and tonight he did a mock presentation to me and the assistant professor this evening. His presntation was on "At-Cut Quartz actuated resonators using plasma activated bonding." His presntation is still a work in progress but the professor had decided that he should practice tonight.

I sat through the presentation, it lack a clear defination of the objective and a clear picture of where "plasma activated bonding" fitted into the picture of the fabrication of this device. Dispite being here for a year, I still feel that my knowledge of material processing methods is rather limited. After the presentation, I decided to hold a mock question period where I popped the question "what is plasma activated bonding?" My friend, Takahashi looked back blankly... he started to try and formulate an answer... something about surface energy of a material being increased by application of a plasma, then he gave up to tell me "I really don't know and the mechanisms aren't well understood."

Why is it hard for people to admit what they don't know? One thing that annoys me the most is people pretending to know, because it's a waste of time. If there is one thing that annoys me even more, is watching 2 people that pretend to know something argue against each other (this is especially true in politics).

The simplest test of knowledge is the following... ask the person how do they know what they know. Drop'em like a sack of potatoes if they can't give a straight answer (and aren't willing to admit it) because there isn't a point continuing the conversation.

Fortunately Takahashi was able to admit it.

Farmer Justin 2!

Remember back in June when I made that post on planing rice? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, 4 months have passed since and it was time to make a return back to the fields and make the harvest. Me, Ono, Helen, Alex and Iinuma-san hopped into Iinuma-san's car and we were off at 8:30 to somewhere in Kawasaki-machi to head on over to Shigeo's farm to help out with the rice harvest. All by hand. I posted why Shigeo did everything by hand in the last post so if you're not entirely sure why, go back and visit the last post. He's a very interesting guy, from Economist to environmental conservator. He's working with a bunch of people to setup an NPO in the area for sustainable development and education.

His background in economics is quite fascinating with the combination of environmental conversation because he's explained to me how making a country more self relyant interms of energy and resources is quite important. Japan imports 60% of all it's food ant 97% of all it's energy. Comparing that to places like Germany where they produce 107% of their food and France is in the ball park of 200%. No, this wouldn't be a comment you'd hear from just your average farmer, he's an educated farmer!

This time around we spent most of the morning and afternoon harvesting rice all by hand. It was quite the work, but it went pretty fast. By lunch with about 10 people, we had harvested an entire rice field, tied the rice into many bushels and then hung them outside to dry.

Alex harvesting rice!

By noon, we were all crowed around nice wooden but worn benched outside snacking away at a hearty meal of rice balls, veggies and soup.

The wooden benches. Simple, yet functional.

By the afternoon, we started on another field and got 1/4 of the way though and called it a day.

The group of friends I was with got invited out to one of the volunteer's house to have coffee that afternoon. The guy is an architect who had completed his home by a very nice lake about a year ago, all out of wood harvested locally. The idea was to build a house using only local material and also very environmentally friendly.

The house! Looks like something you'd find in Canada!

I learned plenty about the design of the house that day. For example, beneath this house, is a very huge pit of charcoal. Charcoal is good at absorbing humid air and air filtration. If exterior humidity was 100% outside during heavy rain, the interior would remain at about 75% (all of this data was metered).

The house also has an open celining between the first and second floor, allowing hot air to escape from the bottom and rise to the top. A window at the top can be opened to let the hot air flow out of the house and small vents at the bottom are opened at the bottom to allow cooler air to flow in. During the hot summers the house can be kept at 28 C dispite the outdoor temperature of 35 C with no airconditioning.

The windows, while extremely big, are all quadrouple paned to prevent loss of heat during the frigid winters. The floor is heated with a water boiler during the winter. In addition, the house is also equiped with a very sweet home theater system with exceptionally big speakers. See the picture below.

That's Ono, sticking his head into the speaker system.

Fortunately the house is located in a remote section of the mountains and the neighbours only come to their cabin once in a while, leaving the owner of this place free to blast his music as loud as he wants, when he wants. It would be really neat to have a house like this.

I've also posted a photo album online. If you've got a chance, check it out!

Calgary: Sept 30 -- Oct 2, 2006

I know that Matt's been waiting for this post. It's 9:00 am at lab, been here since 8:00 am, just finished editing a few photos, exporting them, adding comments and uploaded the album to the net.

So here's me reporting in on my Calgary trip.

Sept 30 2006 -- Arrival in Calgary

I hopped off the plane and made my way straight past and out of baggage claim-- I was travelling with carry on luggage only for my Canadian trip. I'll have you know how nice it is to not spend 30 minutes at the conveyor belt of luggage claim waiting for a suitcase to pop out.

I strolled out past the exit of luggage claim to go find Matt somewhere near the exits. It was the other way around unforutnately as I walked right by him without noticing while he blurts "and he walks right by." So sue me, I had an early start that day and my brain wasn't running at full speed.

We jumped into Matt's car and beamed back to his place in all about 15 minutes. Calgary, like Toronto has lots of large highways running all over the place, though Toronto's highways are a plenty wider. I dropped my stuff back at his place and decided to hit the roads to Banff -- it was a beautiful day, why waste it chilling at home? And so, we were off.

After about 2 hours of driving (usually it takes about 1.5 hours to make it out there but traffic was a little bad that day) we made it to Banff. I'll let you guys know, Matt is turning into a Calgarian -- Country music has started creeping into his music mixes, I kid you not. I'll give him this much-- it isn't old school country music atleast.

Matt pumped the WRX up and through a small road off the high way to a lookout point looking down at a valley in Banff. The view was very impressive and unfortunately something that a camera fails to capture. If you want to call youself a Canadian, I sugges that you pay a visit to the Rockies atleast once, especially if you're a Vancouverite. Get a bunch of friends, get a car, drive from Vancouver to Calgary and check out the Rockies and Banff along the way. I assure you that it is something that you won't regret.


Plenty of nice pictures in Banff were taken, actually I'll let them speak for themselves:


Left: Matt's Subaru Wrx by the trees, Right: Matt by the trees


Close up of the leaves in change

These pictures were taken a during a drive around Kananaskis Country which is near by Banff. Nice pictures no? We also strolled around a river that runs near by and took a few shots over there. Which reminds me, Matt! Fire me over some pictures!

After our stint in Banff we headed back for Calgary, as for me I decided to catch up on sleep in the car since after flying in from Toronto, I'd be having a 26 hour day with the time zone change. In addition! That evening we would be heading off to the local casino for some poker action and I definately wanted to be in tip-top shape for the poker action.

By evening we made it back into Calgary, popped by the house to drop off some stuff and made a run to Matt's company where I'd get a tour of the hangar where the pretty planes are kept. The Jet, especially, that Matt now gets to fly. A picture of it right below actually!


Mmmm $14 million dollar jet!

Need to get around in style? Drop $1.4 into Matt's company to buy a share (refundable of course), it's only $2300/hour to operate the plane and I think it seats 6~8 people. Got cash to burn? Just drop Matt a line!

The jet was pretty darn cool. I got a chance to poke around the cabin, fully stocked with all sorts of goodies and took a seat in the cockpit. We popped open the cover to one of the engines for me to take a look. Pictures, of course are in the photo album. I also got to take a look at the turbo-prop plane that Matt used to fly. Well I even had a chance to poke around it once a long while back when I was in Vancouver. Planes are very cool machines. One day, I'd like to have a nice small one for myself. One day :)

Right after the hangar trip, we headed off to "Joey's Tomatoes,"to grab some dinner. I'll say that the waitress there are pretty darn good looking and you might end up taking your time eating because they also like coming by and chatting it up a little from time to time. The steak they make over there is just awesome. They have this great pepper sauce that goes with it and the steak was exceptionally tender. If you go to Calgary, be sure to get some grade A steak, you'll never regret it.

Finally, the poker action.

Matt has provided a short summary of our little poker stint here, but I'll tell my side of the story. Before we stepped into the casino, actually during the drive back from Banff, I told Matt that I had a feeling that I would win big that day. Actually, it's been a feeling I had since I knew that I would be coming to Calgary, about a month before I arrived.

We arrived at the "Cash Casino" a little casino somewhere in a semi-industrial/commercial area outside the heart of Calgary. It looked a little seedy, but none the less, it had the kind of poker and the limits we wanted to play. We'd be playing $1/$2 no limit Texas Hold'em that night. There were other places that were playing Texas Hold'em, but the buy-in's required were considerably higher, sitting at $300~$400+ required to have a respectable sized poker stack, an amount beyond I was willing to risk. The max buy-in for the place we were at was $200, which was the right range for me.

We walked through the doors, past a smokey room filled with slots and table games like pai-gow poker into the backrooms where the poker tables were. An added bonus is that the room was also a smoke free room! Yes! I hate being in a smoke filled room for extended periods of time.

We took our seats at a table together and we ended up pretending that we were strangers that evening. It just seemed safer to me. The table we sat at was pretty quiet, there wasn't much banter and people were pretty focused on the cards. There was one guy at the table that had a group of friends playing at various other tables which seemed to liven things up as they stopped by our table from time to time to chat with their other friend, but that was pretty much it. Small talk with the other players was... pretty small.

I played exceptionally tight the entire night. There were 8~10 players at the table the entire time and the players were pretty loose-- lots of callers. If that's the case, you're better off waiting for some pretty good hands before getting or else you risk losing too often-- part of poker is winning money, the other part is to not lose it. Not losing money in poker is exceptionally important... especially when you've got to make tough folds.

We started playing at about 11:00 pm, the night droned on for a few hours before Matt and I got moved to another table as the managers wanted to close our table. I won a few hands but ended up losing the extra cash because I was insistent on confirming my gut feeling that my opponent had me beat dispite me having some pretty decent cards. I was right, unfortunately.

Things got really interesting that night after a gruffy biker dude arrived in his suit and pulled out wad of cash where he tossed $200 on to the table (a small portion from a big wad). He got his chips and played incredibly agressive and like he didn't care about losing. Scared the crap out of many players at the table and within 1~2 hours, he had atleast $800 total in his stack from other players not willing to take him on... or the guy catching weird cards and taking them out. Very scary stuff.

As for me, I wasn't playing all that many hands that night and I would be down about $50 at one point since I'd keep missing the flop with decent hole cards. Things took a different turn after a while however. I had AQ one hand and flopped QQ6, there were about 4 other players that hand and Matt also stayed in after a bet of $6 preflop. Well Matt bets $20, I raise back to $40 to tell him that I've got something... then he raises me all in. Well what am I to do? I got a pretty good hand and if he even had a Q, I had him probably out kicked. Call! He flips over his cards to show 66. Crap, he had a full house on the flop!? Well the turn came, junk... the river? An ace hit's the table to give me the win and I end up cleaning out Matt for $88 bucks and he had to rebuy in for $400. Well alteast he lost the money to me, he'd get it back anyways.

So here I am sitting around with about a $300 stack. A guy that's been pushed around all night by the chip lead recently started making some big bets and taking down some nice large pots. I had an K-10 one hand with a 10 top pair after the flop. He keeps calling my bets on the flop and turn. By the time we get to the river. He bets $75 at me. What the hell? I didn't even bet that huge at him and now this? After thinking hard, I decided to take out $75 from my stack to call. He had nothing but low pair and was trying to push me out. Sweet, my stack is up to about $400! The best had yet to come.

I had a few good hands that night but I had very few of them actually, I was feeling that I was getting statistically too few of them; I had to get a good hand sometime soon! At one point, I thought exceptionally hard about getting AA, the best cards possible preflop. I stared down the cards flying at me and mentally willed each card that hit the table coming to me to be an ace. My gut feelings were exceptionally strong that hand, my gut was telling me that I'd hit it... exactly on this hand. I flip my cards over to find... 22. Somewhat anti-climatic, but still I had a good feeling about this hand. I called preflop and was in early position with 5 other players in. The flop hit, 10 7 2. A 2 hit the table!! I was sitting on a hidden set of 2's. Nobody would ever see this one coming. I was extactic... but of course, calm, cool and collected.

Light betting ensued on the flop and I decided to call a $5 bet-- I decided to slow play this hand and hoped to milk it for all it's worth. The next card hit, and it was a 9. Possible straight on the table but from my observation, it's be a gut shot draw. The probabilities were still in my favor. One player bets $20, I decide to raise to $40 and I get 2 callers. There's about $130 in the pot now. The last card comes out, a 10! I am now sitting on a full house! The biker dude before me checks the bet, I bet $40, the other guy calls and the biker dude tells us all that he's going "all in." My heart was skipping with joy. Gave it a second and called with the rest of my cash. The other guy backed out.

The biker flipped his cards over to reveal that he had 10-3, he caught triple 10's on the river. I look at him and told him "nice hand," paused... and then flipped over my 22 to reveal my full house. The players at the table gasp, yeah I took out 1/2 of Mr Crazy biker's $800 stack and my stack was over $900.

There is a bit of a taboo of leaving the table right after a big win so I decided to stick it out for a few more rotations. The biker dude transfered off the table after that crushing defeat, a few of the players were talking about how tight I played the entire night. I loosened up a little because everyone really tightened up and bluffed a few hands and showed off my cards to everyone a few times to loosen them up. My stack still commanded the respect of everyone at the table and very few were willing to take me on. After a few rotations, I decided end the night at about 5:00 am and cashed out for $912 and gave back Matt his $88 bucks which actually came in useful... because I got to use it to earn an extra $88 off the biker dude from that one hand.

I left the table, then Matt and I met up in the parking lot and then we were off. Matt was up $93 bucks and I was up about $600. Not bad, not bad at all.


The fan of cash at the top is mine, the one at the bottom is Matt's

We got back at 5:30 am, had a celebratory beer and headed off to sleep.

The next day? Well, I met up with an old friend Alan that moved to Calgary... Matt and Alan got me horrendously drunk along the 17th Ave strip otherwise known as the "Red Mile" in Calgary. I'd talk more but I think this post is long enough as it is. Waking up the next day, I caught breakfast with Matt and was off to Vancouver.

Calgary was great and if you want to see more pictures, they're of course here.

Old draft dates: Toronto

Oddly, I had the report on my Toronto leg on draft a few days ago and finally published it today. The only problem is that blogger decided to keep the original date of the entry. Scroll down for details.

Postcards

I bought a bunch of postcards in Canada to send to friends overseas. Each one costed me about 30 cents. To mail one of these postcards internationally costs $1.49 according to the Canada Post webpage (which is a very poorly designed webpage because it took me a little while to find the information I was looking for). Who would have thought that sending a postcard overseas costs times the price of buying a post card! Amazing.

Diamond Parking: Go To Hell!!

Today I went for lunch at Steveston, parked the car at the Riversong parking, went for lunch at the warf, bought a t-shirt then came back to the car to find a ticket for $50 which was issued 20 minutes right after I parked the car. The reason? I walked off the parking lot away from the set of stores right by and they had an under cover spy somewhere watching. The comment was even written on the ticket. Unbelievable, I had assumed that the set of stores that I would be going near by would be covered in the parking. Apparently not.

Things have changed since the last time I've been in Steveson, previously that parking lot could have been used for doing your shopping or whatever in the Steveston docks area. Unfortunately that isn't the case any more. My own fault for not reading the sign more carefully. Unfortunately I didn't see the ticket until I got home... had I seen it sooner, I would have quicky poped over to a coffee shop, got myself a coffee and sent a copy of the recipt to the company to contest the ticket.

The lot doesn't even charge for time, nor was it full at all. In the past that parking lot never had problems with it being overfull. No, apparently it seems to me that the stores around had decided to hire some company to track if people came to their stores and give them a ticket if they didn't. Anyways, watch out if you park in Steveston because it seems that the patrollers there are incredibly vigil. It's sad to think that people make money from a "service" like this, but there you have it.

Sept 28 - Sept 29: Niagra and Downtown Toronto

Sept 28th: Niagra with Drew

Woke up at 7:00 am dispite being jet lagged about 10 minutes ahead of Lily, to hear her alarm go off twice before she got out of bed :) It was rather amusing. We caught breakfast and after some milling about at her place, we were on our way on the subway system.

I made it to the Eaton's Center at about 9:00 am, the time I had the rental car reserved. The rental car place was supposedly on the roof of the building... a place that took me nearly 40 minutes to find after wandering the entire mall. All was good, after I found the roof top parkade and then after that, I would be off in a Hyundai car that handled pretty nicely, I thought.

After getting out of the parkade and getting lost and caught in downtown Toronto traffic for quite some time (missing plenty of turns and going the wrong ways countless times) I would finally make it to the 404 highway to head towards Drew's place (the 401 would have been significantly better, but I didn't know any better at the time).

The one nice thing about driving in Toronto is their large highways that go kind of everywhere at really high speeds. I was ripping through the highways at 140km/h without breaking a sweat! Sweet! After driving for about an hour, I made it to Drew's place. At that point, it struck me-- getting around this world is pretty amazing. Just over a few days, I would fly across the pacific and Canada to land in Toronto and then make my way about 100 km out of Toronto to a lot precisely somewhere in Mississauga where I've never been to. Global maps and addresses are quite something.

After picking Drew up we were off to a mall to hang out and grab some lunch!


Left: Drew, Right: Greek Lunch

After milling about the Mall for a little bit, we were off on the roads again for Niagra, about 120 km further away. Driving a car at 120~140km/h vs riding my scooter going at about 60km/h is a world of difference in travel. Just getting to Niagra falls from Toronto on scooter would be a day trip unto itself! Well, I gotta live with what I got in Japan.

We made a little pitstop in St. Catherines for me to pick up some presents for a few friends of mine in Japan. My roomie and one other person in Japan both did their homestay in St. Catherines and I think they'd have quite the kick getting something from the town they stayed in. After that pitstop, we were off to Niagra falls!


Left: Falls from the Top, Right: Falls from the front

I had the opportunity to ride the "Maid of the Mist" boat, a tour boat that roams near the bottom of the falls with a speaker blaring a recorded message with tidbits about the falls. Apparently, long ago, a 7 year old boy had once fallen off a boat, down the falls and managed to survive. I would hate to imagine being swept under all that falling water.

The falls themselves are very impressive-- it is something that you just have to be there to experience. The amount of mist gushing up from the falls is quite impressive and would look all the more impressive had it not been a cloudy that day. Never the less, the poncho I was wearing that day was quite soaked by the end of that boat ride.


Maid of the Mist snow globe

Sept 29th: Downtown Toronto

I got back the previous day at about 12:30 am to Ida's place... a little later than anticipated-- I got a little lost finding my way back to downtown Toronto after dropping Drew off. I crashed and wouldn't wake up till 10:00 am to find Ida's place empty (Ida had left at 6 am, dispite her noting that she was dropping utensils all over the place that morning... which I slept through). I gave Drew a ring that morning and we agreed to meet in the afternoon to hang out and do a photoshoot of downtown.

Inside the Eaton Center

We had quite the time running around downtown playing with our cameras. We did plenty that day. While walking around downtown we caught a Jamacian guy playing speed chess on the street. There were 2 challanges going that day. The Jamacian guy posted a note on the sidewalk saying that he was Jamacian's best speed chess player and said that he'd have a friendly game of speed chess where he'd handily beat anyone that played him. The second is that he was going to earn his plane ticket back to Jamaca from the donations of his spectators.
Speed chess in action

I even tried a game against this reknowned player and had my rear end handed to me in about 2 minutes of playing. Amazing. Of an interesting note, while watching this Jamacian guy go at it, Drew was approached by a amateur-professional photographer who opened up the conversation with "want to try this lens"? The lens Drew got to play with costs on the order of $1000! Nice. He also got lots of tips and pointers from the photographer. Unfortunately, this all started while I was elsewhere in the crowd taking pictures.

Infront of the Eaton's Center there was a street artist going at it on the sidewalk making a very nice picture from some sort of printed image had had on hand. A large crowd gathered around the man while they watched as his art took shape while using chalk! The control the guy had with chalk was simply amazing. I could not have imaged such a vivid image made from chalk.

A street artist and his picture in work

The evening came and thanks to Lily and her handy work, she had organized a dinner of friends in town to meet up with me. Drew and I headed off to Alice Fazooli's for dinner where I was greeted by Ida, Steve, Lily, Rich, Felix, Ben, Felix's g/f, Drew and Jess. It was quite the gathering and we had a good time chatting it up around the dinner table.

The Crew around for dinner

As an added bonus, the restaurant had tape going in the background to learn italian in the washroom. What a strange concept.

After dinner, a small bunch of us retreated to a near-by bar for some billards and drinks before winding down for the evening.

Ben and I

There are more pictures, of course and they are posted here. Enjoy the pictures!

Upnext, my trip to Calgary.

Toronto: Sept 27 -- Crash Landing at Lily's!

I'm saving my Korea report for a little later. I just downloaded all my photos from my trips to Toronto and Calgary and decided that I'll work on posting about those legs of my trip... starting with Toronto.

I reason to come out to Toronto, in particular to make good on my deal Ida that I would come out to visit her in Toronto after her visit to Sendai Japan. Deciding that I would visit her, I decided that I would visit as many friends as possible in Canada, turning my initial trip home to a tour of Canada. Toronto would be my first stop before hitting Calgary and home.

Day1 : Sept 27 -- Crash Landing at Lily's!

I actually arrived in Vancouver the day before on the 26th at about 11 am. I stayed one night in Vancouver to meet up with the family, grab some dinner then headed out the next day on my Westjet flight leaving at 8:45 am to Toronto.

Being back in Canada for just the first 2 days, I would realize how friendly everyone in Canada is. As I stepped through the security gate with no issues, the guy with the metal detector wand have me the funny eye and jokingly said "we'll get you some other time."

I settled down in the terminal and waited for my flight to arrive-- I arrived at 7:30 am and my plane hadn't arrived yet. Across from me was an unattended agenda book left on the table I decided to leave alone thinking that the person that owned it might come back. Some guy walked by me and promptly asked if it was my book to which I responded 'no.' He then immediately handed off to the attendants at the desk near by. What a friendly and civilized place this country is.

A flight to Montreal came and went while I was waiting for my Toronto flight in the span of an hour, I will have to say that WestJet runs a very tight operation when it comes to coordinating their flights. My flight arrived at the gate and I borded. The flight attendents were remarkably friendly and funny, something that seemed unthinkable to me from my time in Japan-- if you're dealing with customers, the empoyees always use very formal language. Nope, not in Canada.

As for the inflight safety instructions, the attendant first told us "in the unlikely event of a cabin pressure change first put your own oxygen mask first before assisting others... if you're travelling with 2 or more children, pick your favorite one first." We had a good laugh.

Looking out my window to the side at another WestJet plane
What Vancouver looks like from the Sky

Behind me, sat 2 people one back from Afganistand and another a girl that was in Vancouver for a high school reunion. Both strangers to each other but they chatted it up anyways. Something that I haven't commonly seen done in Japan. Yes, Canada is an incredibly friendly place, I never realized that I would miss that till I got back.

4 hours later (and + 3 from time zone differences) I finally arrived in Toronto at about 4 pm. Hopped on a bus then on a subway to make my way to Lily's in Mid-town Toronto. Lily met up with me at the subway station rather surpised I was without a suitcase. Yup, for these 6 days I decided I would travel light with only a backpack and a shoulder bag. I also didn't want to wait for check-in luggage at the airport neither... because it always takes about 30 minutes for me to get my luggage from baggage claim.

We walked a few blocks to Lily's place inside an old looking appartment complex with plenty of character. The interior was nice, neat and well kept. Nice job Lily! I was impressed.

Ida came out to meet us shortly after at the subway station and we were off to find a restaurant to find grab dinner together. After some walking down Younge street we settled down to a place called "The Green Mango" that served Thai food. We had a Green Mango salad, a chicken dish and a pork dish to share for dinner. By the end, we were pretty stuffed and the food was pretty good.

We walked after dinner to walk off the food. We started heading back to Lily's after it started drizzling rain. I showed off a few pictures of Korea that evening, Ida had to get back after being pooped from a long day of work. As for Lily and I, we chated for a bit (a little about world events) then worked on our respective computers for a bit before crashing for the night. The next day, I would make my way to Niagra Falls with Drew.