Dear Charles - Week 1
Dear Charles,
This is the first of what I hope can become a weekly tradition for us. You see, I know you are keeping informed on international events, but very rarely will local Canadian news or Vancouver stories reach you. We just don't make the international headlines that often. You could read some of the local blogs or online news sites, but I also know that you'll be busy with you assignment. So here's my offer: every week, on Sunday, I will point you to some news stories I think you'd be interested in. I'll include three sections, What Canada is Talking About, West Coast Stories, and None the Wiser (this last section will be for funny stories or news that made me shake my head in disbelief). Then, I'll tell you about my week, if anything interesting happened.
Bear with me as this week might be short. I'll try to "flag" stories as I hear them during the week, but this time, I'll have to go solely by memory.
What Canada is Talking About
Hard to ignore, Harper's surprise visit to Afghanistan was the topic of most talkshows around the country. Canadian's seem to be equally divided on whether this was a good idea or not, although there's been a recent surge in the support for the mission (55% of Canadians back the mission and 41% are opposed). Note that nobody raised the issue of the Prime Minister's safety (Kandahar is pretty dangerous these days).
Cindy Klassen beats her own world record at the 3,000 m in Calgary. Klassen is the one who came back home from Turin with five medals, one gold, two silver and two bronze. You go girl!
The Canadian Medical Association is going through PR-hell after 15 out of 19 members of the editorial board resigned to protest the firing of the journal's top two editors. They accuse the firing of being a form of censorship. Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai, the President of the CMA was on As It Happens this week and evaded any question about the reasons behind the firings.
(The Journal has some pretty interesting content online.)
West Coast Stories
Not to be outdone during a world-wide protest to mark the third anniversary of the Iraq war, between 900 and 7000 people marched in Vancouver (the number varies largely
depending on the source) on Saturday March 18. Vancouverites love a good protest and a few are planning to continue their vigil in front of the U.S. Consulate until the bombs stop. Nobody in Montreal volunteered for this task ;)
While 900 showed up to protest the war in Iraq (I'm making an editorial statement and picking a number here, ok?), 500 attended the launch of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival on Friday. The festival is intended to be "an exciting new cultural initiative for our city, promoting Vancouver's spectacular beauty and natural resource of over 36,000 cherry trees in our parks, boulevards, and private gardens."
(Warning: vcbf.com has nothing to do with cherry blossoms...)
20,376 individuals have signed the petition to recall David Emerson. Mr. Emerson surely hoped that this story would disappear from public interest, but he definitely chose the wrong riding to piss off. Wikipedia has a bit of history to explain why this story is not going away in Vancouver.
None the Wiser
Staying true to the phrase "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen," Britney Spears, who is expecting her second baby, accidentally jammed a hypodermic needle in her foot. She was stepping out of her car, barefoot, somewhere in Hawaii. Now, never mind the part about walking around barefoot, but she's expecting a second baby? Say it ain't so...
Personally
Last week was a waste. I went to work on Monday. Period. I've been sick since, coughing away, unable to sleep. The cough is slowly easing, so I'll be returning to work tomorrow. I'm sure plenty of stuff is waiting for me!
Your girlfriend was a gem yesterday. She dropped by with some sushi for dinner and we watched Two for the Money with Matthew McConaughey, Al Pacino and Rene Russo. Wow, we didn't expect this movie to be any good, we mainly rented it to see the handsome Matthew, but it wasn't bad at all. We had a chance to talk about addiction afterwards, why some people are easily addicted and others, not.
I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. You would love this book, I'll lend it to you when you return, or if you run out of books on your trip, let me know, I'll send it with Lara when she comes to visit you. It's basically a book about science explained in a language that everyone can understand. Bryson not only relays information about our world, but also asks interesting questions (if you say that planet Earth weighs 5.9725 billion trillion metric tons, how did you come up with that number?) and tells the stories of the scientists who dedicated their lives to answering such questions.
Hope everything is going well. I'm sure your grandma was very happy to see you!
Kiss, kiss. Mel
This is the first of what I hope can become a weekly tradition for us. You see, I know you are keeping informed on international events, but very rarely will local Canadian news or Vancouver stories reach you. We just don't make the international headlines that often. You could read some of the local blogs or online news sites, but I also know that you'll be busy with you assignment. So here's my offer: every week, on Sunday, I will point you to some news stories I think you'd be interested in. I'll include three sections, What Canada is Talking About, West Coast Stories, and None the Wiser (this last section will be for funny stories or news that made me shake my head in disbelief). Then, I'll tell you about my week, if anything interesting happened.
Bear with me as this week might be short. I'll try to "flag" stories as I hear them during the week, but this time, I'll have to go solely by memory.
What Canada is Talking About
Hard to ignore, Harper's surprise visit to Afghanistan was the topic of most talkshows around the country. Canadian's seem to be equally divided on whether this was a good idea or not, although there's been a recent surge in the support for the mission (55% of Canadians back the mission and 41% are opposed). Note that nobody raised the issue of the Prime Minister's safety (Kandahar is pretty dangerous these days).
Cindy Klassen beats her own world record at the 3,000 m in Calgary. Klassen is the one who came back home from Turin with five medals, one gold, two silver and two bronze. You go girl!
The Canadian Medical Association is going through PR-hell after 15 out of 19 members of the editorial board resigned to protest the firing of the journal's top two editors. They accuse the firing of being a form of censorship. Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai, the President of the CMA was on As It Happens this week and evaded any question about the reasons behind the firings.
(The Journal has some pretty interesting content online.)
West Coast Stories
Not to be outdone during a world-wide protest to mark the third anniversary of the Iraq war, between 900 and 7000 people marched in Vancouver (the number varies largely
depending on the source) on Saturday March 18. Vancouverites love a good protest and a few are planning to continue their vigil in front of the U.S. Consulate until the bombs stop. Nobody in Montreal volunteered for this task ;)
While 900 showed up to protest the war in Iraq (I'm making an editorial statement and picking a number here, ok?), 500 attended the launch of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival on Friday. The festival is intended to be "an exciting new cultural initiative for our city, promoting Vancouver's spectacular beauty and natural resource of over 36,000 cherry trees in our parks, boulevards, and private gardens."
(Warning: vcbf.com has nothing to do with cherry blossoms...)
20,376 individuals have signed the petition to recall David Emerson. Mr. Emerson surely hoped that this story would disappear from public interest, but he definitely chose the wrong riding to piss off. Wikipedia has a bit of history to explain why this story is not going away in Vancouver.
None the Wiser
Staying true to the phrase "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen," Britney Spears, who is expecting her second baby, accidentally jammed a hypodermic needle in her foot. She was stepping out of her car, barefoot, somewhere in Hawaii. Now, never mind the part about walking around barefoot, but she's expecting a second baby? Say it ain't so...
Personally
Last week was a waste. I went to work on Monday. Period. I've been sick since, coughing away, unable to sleep. The cough is slowly easing, so I'll be returning to work tomorrow. I'm sure plenty of stuff is waiting for me!
Your girlfriend was a gem yesterday. She dropped by with some sushi for dinner and we watched Two for the Money with Matthew McConaughey, Al Pacino and Rene Russo. Wow, we didn't expect this movie to be any good, we mainly rented it to see the handsome Matthew, but it wasn't bad at all. We had a chance to talk about addiction afterwards, why some people are easily addicted and others, not.
I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. You would love this book, I'll lend it to you when you return, or if you run out of books on your trip, let me know, I'll send it with Lara when she comes to visit you. It's basically a book about science explained in a language that everyone can understand. Bryson not only relays information about our world, but also asks interesting questions (if you say that planet Earth weighs 5.9725 billion trillion metric tons, how did you come up with that number?) and tells the stories of the scientists who dedicated their lives to answering such questions.
Hope everything is going well. I'm sure your grandma was very happy to see you!
Kiss, kiss. Mel
Labels: books, random observations
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