When I was in Whistler BC a few weeks back, we stayed for two nights with some friends of Tim's from Toronto. One of them told me about a building a couple blocks from my place that had a disturbing sign on it. Intrigued by this discovery, I had to get the full story behind this sign.

To my surprise, Uniforms Registered is not a manufacturer or distributor of uniforms. It is actually a mysterious art museum entitled "Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation". Ydessa Hendeles is a prominent Canadian artist. She received the Order of Ontario in 1998, as the Founder, director and curator of the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation and Grand Founder of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

The disturbing sign I'm referring to simply says "YOU ARE CAUGHT THINKING ABOUT KILLING ANYONE YOU WANT". After a couple quick Google searches, I discovered that this piece comes from an artist named Jenny Holzer, an American conceptual artist who is famous for using billboards and street signs for her statements and aphorisms (truisms) and inflammatory essays.

From Wikipedia: "The arresting quality of Holzer's billboards is an exploitation of urban space, which took its modern form as a space solely for commerce. Accordingly, the viewer is usually prepared to see commercial messages. With Holzer's work, viewers are instead confronted with statements such as "it is in your self-interest to be very tender." These statements reverse the function of advertisements, whose objective is to sell a product to the viewer, often with disregard for their best interests."

Labels: jenny holzer, uniforms registered, Ydessa Hendeles, Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation

Since I have a few minutes to spare before I head out for the night, I wanted to give you all an update since I'm almost at the 2 week point of my one-month abstinence.

So far, not drinking alcohol is... well.. it's quite dry (No pun intended). Everything is pretty boring actually. I feel pretty healthy and everything, but to be honest, sometimes it's just nice to go home from work and have a cold one.

I guess if I do it for long enough I'll find a way to make things interesting. But I don't look forward to the weekends the same way I used to, I don't have a sense of humour like I used to. Everything is just very dull.

Instead of having a beer after my hockey game tonight I'm going to go home and play tetris. I'm so excited.

Labels: beer bong, celebration, joy, laughter, parades, partying, tetris

Sometimes when you're at the theatre watching a comedy, they'll show outtakes at the end of the movie. Tonight, Han, George and I were at the theatre watching the movie 300. Far from a comedy, and with no chance of seeing outtakes at the end, we were entertained in other ways.

Precisely at the most pivotal and somber point in the movie, a man was walking down the stairs on the left side of the theatre; and just as he was stepping down the last few stairs he took an all-out nose dive head first and landed on the bottom walkway. It took him a couple seconds to stand up at which point he shook it off and slowly started walking. At that moment at least a dozen people in the audience were laughing. Others joined in and soon the whole theatre was clapping and cheering for the man. In an effort to curtail his embarrassment the man put his hands up in the air in a George Costanza-like fashion as if to say "Thank-you, Thank-you very much" as he exited the theatre.

Labels: 300, movie theatre

Over the last couple weeks, I've been drinking a bit too frequently with my vacation and other things that have been going on. I decided today that I'm going to challenge myself to abstain from alcohol for an entire month. Normally after a hard day of work I'll have a beer at night. This challenge means 0 alcohol whatsoever. Not even a cold one after a long day at work.

I think the hardest part will be getting through St. Patricks Day next weekend. But I've made up my mind and I'm going to see if I can go a month with absolutely nothing. It will probably reflect well on my schooling; final exams are conveniently in less than a month, so this should be good timing. It probably doesn't help that I've got a bar-fridge full of beer, but the more temptations I have, the stronger I will have to be.

Details: One month of no alcohol from March 12, 2007 to April 12, 2007



Picture courtesy of The Beer Zone

Labels: abstinence, alcohol, beer, drinking

The one person who has consistently motivated me to stay physically active is my very own father. He is probably one of the most fit 57-year-olds ever. If I even wanted to be close to keeping up with him, I'd have to train extremely hard, and he'd still be able to out-run me. He lifts weights Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and he runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. That's 5 days a week!

On Tuesdays and Thursdays he runs 6-8 miles, or almost 10-13KM, while on Saturdays he runs 9-10 miles, or 15-16KM. He maintains a good pace too, running around 7-7.5 minute miles. If I add everything up, he runs close to 42KM in a good week, and this is on top of his weight training 3 times a week. I'd like to some day convince my Dad to do a triathlon or a marathon.

Not bad for a short guy!! ;) Keep up the great work Pops! You're an inspiration to all of us slackers.

Labels: dad, father athlete, running

Today is the last day of my 6 day vacation in beautiful British Columbia. I have been visiting my friend Tim and over the last 6 days we have covered lots of ground. I spent the first two days wandering the city; I checked out Grouse Mountain, bought a used snowboard in Burnaby, rode the Skytrain, and we drove up to Whistler. We spent two days snowboarding in Whistler, and the last two days we have been back in Vancouver.

So far I've found Vancouver to be quite different from Toronto in a lot of ways. The city infrastructure successfully combines modern residential towers with business towers, resulting in a cleaner "New York" type downtown area. The city is very livable, so it's no wonder Vancouver has been named the best place to live in the world many times. The people in downtown Vancouver aren't much different than the people in Toronto, but in general they seem a bit nicer. But Whistler on the other hand is a different story; people are extremely nice, accommodating and talkative. Everyone in Whistler seems to be happy. It is after all one of the best ski resorts in the world, so why wouldn't people be happy? The snowboarding in Whistler was absolutely amazing.

The public transportation system in Vancouver is pretty neat. Instead of having a one-fare rate like Toronto where you pay one price whether you're going 1KM or 25KM, they have a fare system where the price depends on the number of zones you are crossing. Each ticket lasts 90 minutes, so you can pay one price to go in multiple directions as long as you return within 90 minutes. The elevated LRT system called the Skytrain moves very quickly and covers quite a bit of ground.

On the east end of downtown, there seems to be an invisible fence that separates East Hastings from West Hastings, keeping the homeless people and drug addicts away from the West end. When I stumbled across this crack neighbourhood, I could literally see crackheads everywhere on the East side, and almost nobody out of the ordinary on the West side. It was quite the contrast and much different than I'm used to in Toronto. In Toronto, the government has effectively spread the homeless people throughout the city to try to avoid having one area with all the homeless people. Each area in Toronto has its share of homeless people, including the very wealthy areas. We can also assume that homeless people find Vancouver more attractive because of the more stable climate and warmer winters. The worst areas in Toronto aren't nearly as scary as East Hastings.

Today I'm going to head to Stanley Park to take a few more photos before I need to start packing up again to prepare for my 7AM flight tomorrow morning. Here are some pictures I've taken so far:

Labels: Blackcomb, British Columbia, SkyTrain, travel, Vancouver, Whistler