This post is a little viral in that I stole the idea from Jen, who stole the idea from pinsandthimbles . A writing exercise where you write 25 things you love in specific details. It reminds me of the opening moments of the film Amelie, where the narrator outlines what Amelie and her family "aime".

My list:

1. I love cuddling with Jaime.
2. I love listening to the sound of the wind blowing through the trees.
3. I love eating eggs benedict on a lazy Sunday morning.
4. I love listening to the sound of crisp, red leaves swishing around my feet on a cold, sunny autumn morning.
5. I love the smell of a fresh Christmas tree.
6. I love listening to crunch of snow beneath my feet in a world blanketed with snow.
7. I love sitting in a big comfy chair with a good book on a rainy day.
8. I love the infectious sound of Jaime giggling.
9. I love arriving off a flight to be met at the arrivals hall by the smiling faces of friends and family.
10. I love watching cats chase laser pointers.
11. I love the sound of rain landing on our tent when we're safe and warm inside.
12. I love pulling the caps off all the jars in our spice rack and smelling the rich spices.
13. I love sitting round a campfire chatting with good friends.
14. I love that in French my husband's name means "I Love".
15. I love walking on a white, powdery-sand beach in the sun.
16. I love the satisfying "click-thunk" noise SLR cameras make when you take a photo.
17. I love warm toast with butter and Vegemite.
18. I love my mum's roast chicken dinners.
19. I love floating on water.
20. I love the smell of bergamot in a really good cuppa earl grey tea.
21. I love watching the scenery go by when travelling by train.
22. I love when something makes me have a really good belly laugh.
23. I love the sound of a well-played cello echoing through my heart.
24. I love the costumed children, the smell of firecrackers, and the pure cold and dark of Halloween night.
25. I love being caught up in the moment.

I came across this artist's blog a few months ago. I love the simplicity of her pencil drawings. And the recurrent bee theme is awesome.


Link: Renee French

I'm testing out some polling applications. There is no write in vote, so if you choose "other", you can always vote in the comments.

Its been very hot lately. Today's high is supposed to be 34 degrees, which could set records for this area. All night I dreampt about Vegemite. For breakfast I had three pieces of toast with butter and vegemite and now my tummy is happy :)

Ok, I think now I have all the bugs sorted out of my new template. It should be working now, but if anyone finds any problems, please leave a comment about it. Cheers.


My new template is a tad problematic. Should have things sorted soon.

First off I'd like to go on record saying I don't agree with the modern Olympics. It seems like a tremendous waste of money that could go to helping a larger number of people. If the world still needs the Olympics, they should do it the old fashion way; men wrestling naked on the steps of the acropolis of Olympus.

But as is the way of my information addiction, I cannot help but absorb the news of the current Olympics. CGI fireworks, stand-in cuter-than-life singers and giant basketball players aside, one cannot miss the medal tally. Its nice to see smaller countries getting on the scoring board; Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and even Togo all have medals. Good for them. But know who's missing? Canada, that's who. Which wouldn't be quite so pathetic if it weren't for the fact that we will be hosting the Olympics in less than 18 months time.

Now I know what you're all saying, "that's the winter Olympics", which is true. Let's hope Canada can improve itself in that traditional forum. But considering 90% of the population of Canada lives within 200 km-wide strip in the SOUTH of the country, where everyone gets a pretty decent summer, and sports like soccer, swimming, and baseball are so popular, you would think we'd be able to pull in at least one medal.

If Canada doesn't pull it's socks up soon, it's going to look pretty lame.

I haven't really put much interest into paring down my inbox in my gmail account. The search function in good, and there is so much room it's not like I have to actively delete stuff. Still, last month Jaime managed to shame me into feeling that I shouldn't have 2800 emails sitting in my inbox. Though I have pretty good faith in the gmail search, I still don't like to just archive stuff without putting some label on it, so it took me a while, but I now have a paltry 27 emails in my inbox.

Last month I received my Climate Action Dividend from the British Columbia government. The idea is that the government slaps an extra tax on petrol and then pays everyone in the province a $100 bribe. Anyone with a vehicle then uses said cheque to pay for their more expensive petrol. But for those of us without cars, we can use it to make some kind of purchase that will benefit the environment.

So I decided to buy a bicycle. I can't really call it a benefit to the environment as I don't drive (dedicated victim of public transit) and will not be using this bike to commute. Not because UBC is a good 10km from my house, and it almost all up-hill, but rather because riding your bike in traffic is fucking dangerous! While I admire the hordes of folks who do it, I would never. While you might be in the right most of the time, car/truck is always going to win in head-to-head battle.

So my new noble stead is merely for getting some exercise. I have the benefit at the moment of living across the street from the beach. And the beginning of the seawall bicycle path. Which means almost ten kms of beach on one side and forest on the other. And while you have to watch for other cyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders and pedestrians who don't understand the difference between walking path and cyclepath, there are no cars to deal with at all.

While my eco-bribe only covered 1/5th the cost of my bike, I am very happy to have a bike again. My old all-terrain mountain bike is moldering in my dad's garage in Canberra and according to him is not worth shipping over. My new one is super-comfy. Shocks on the front, shocks under the super-padded seat. My only regret is that I umm-and-awed too long and missed out on the 2008 model which was bright red. The 2009 was black and more expensive, but is comfortable to ride and that's the most important thing.

I'm wondering what other people's experiences have been like with Cuil (the new search engine created by a few ex-googlers). The first day I tried it I basically got a recurrent "our server is too busy" message, though I do like the minimalistic black home page. Today I actually managed to get some results. Having cuiled* "shanathalas", a name that so far only seems to be proprietry to me, I ended up with much different results than when I google that word. Google generally top rates this blog, and references to it, followed by a lot of my flickr pages. However cuil's top listings for "shanathalas" bring up references to my flickr photos, but not on flickr, but rather flickriver, a new flickr app. It shows no reference to my blog, but notes my existance on the blogrolls of metalmonkey and on other friend's blogs. So in other words, just random pulls, rather than any relevant listing.

Flickriver as an app is quite nice to look at, but then again, I think the same effect could be created by a dark background on the regular flickr site. I've been expecting a "make background black" button from the flickr folks for ages.

What do you think?

* I can't very well say "googled".

I read a lot of sustainability-themed blogs at the moment. While many of them are very good, sometimes they can leave one feeling more overwhelmed, frustrated and downright depressed with the state of the earth and the massive change it needs to save it. But this post today by No Impact Man really brought home a powerful yet simple message.

Hey All, just a heads up that I have got myself a new job. I'm still at UBC, but I have fallen back into the loving embrace of IT (read: get paid a decent wage). I will now be working for the Office of Learning Technology, as Applications User Support. I start on the 29th. Looking forward to it. While I will miss working in the Archaeology Lab, I know that the project I was on will end eventually and then I'd be out of work.

To all my friends overseas, I miss you all so very much right now.

The Vancouver Aquarium is one of my favourite attractions here in Vancouver. Its one of the few things that is awesome no matter what the weather is like. All of our mates who've visited us have been dragged there. So this past weeks they've had good and bad news.

The Bad News:
There 15-year-old stellar sea lion named "Tag" just passed away from cancer. He was a real character and always enjoyed amusing the visitors by sticking out his tongue and splashing people with water. He leaves behind 11 I'm-very-sure-saddened female sea lions. Here's a photo I took of him in better days:


The Good News:
Qila, one of the beluga whales who was herself born in the aquarium, gave birth to a baby. While I am not a fan of whales in captivity, I am happy that this baby seems to have been born healthy, and that Qila is able to take care of her/him. This baby beluga is the first beluga to be born to an aquarium-born beluga.


Photo: Vancouver Aquarium

So now that Jaime has his old pc up and running again, I was able to try out the Spore demo character creator. It actually has me excited about this game again. Hopefully they don't delay it any further before it comes out. It has a lot of potential.

From the European Commission. (Link from New Scientist Blog)

So we're home. Jetlag is hitting me pretty bad so will have to leave a longer post for later. However, I would like say that this was the best holiday ever!!! So many awesome sights to see, so many great friends to catch up with (and we even made a few new ones). Hats off to all the awesome hosts who put us up.

I can't believe I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. Have no idea how I'll cope. Looking forward to sleeping in our own bed tonight though.

So we have travelled to the higher latitudes to the wonderful city of Edinburgh, and we are staying with our friends Tancred and Evelyn. Edinburgh has been the most laid-back and relaxing city we've been to so far. We've seen Edinburgh Castle, Mary King's Close, lots of Scottish Baronial architecture and had a walk round Holyrood Park (though we haven't managed to climb Arthur's Seat yet). And we have indulged in the local gourmet delight that is the deep-fried Mars bar: a unique culinary experience indeed!

So we've made it to the UK. It actually took us less time to get from Dusseldorf to London than it did to go from Heathrow to the Docklands, but we made it to our next temporary home staying with our friend, Aoife, who has been a fabulous host.

Today we took in the British Museum, and saw Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace and even saw some Canada Geese in St James Park. This evening we were shown to the Prospect of Whitby for dinner by our good friend Falsedan and his lovely girlfriend, Aija. We enjoyed a lovely pub meal and drinks, though the pub was so old and the floors so sloped, you had to hold on to your drink lest it slide off the table.

Tomorrow were going to try to get to the Tower of London.

Hey all, just letting you know that I posted a few photos of our trip to flickr.

So we made it to Düsseldorf! Five hours on the trains from Paris and then last night we were eating roast pork and drinking copious amounts of German beer. Its great catching up with Steve and Alex and their little bub, Emily. Today we checked out the Rhine river, the mustard museum and watched the Chelsea v Manchester Utd. game.