Outrage

Oh, the drama. VANOC revealed our 2010 mascots and the comments have not stopped since. If you haven't seen them, they're on this web site.

The general feedback has been so negative. First, people wonder what they're supposed to represent. I have to agree, the stories behind each character are a bit complicated, but in the end, does it really matter? Are they cute and could they translate well into merchandise? I think so. Who cares what they are supposed to be?

Common complaints were made about the Asian style (Pokemon, Hello Kitty). People asked "is this BC?". Well, it's definitely Vancouver. And pretending that the city is not influenced by its residents from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines is plain short-sighted. There's a huge Asian influence in Vancouver, it's what makes this city unique.

Personally, I like Quatchi and his blue ear-muffs. He's also wearing big Ugg boots, likes the ones I see girls wearing around the city, even though there's not a centimeter of snow. He's very Vancouver.

Better than the snowball and ice cube, if you ask me...

A weekend would be nice

Wait... Didn't we just finish the weekend? Right... Didn't feel like a weekend.

Content of my MBA project is now 100% complete, with references, keywords, an abstract, all lists and proper formatting. My supervisor is reviewing this version hopefully in the next few days and I'd like to think that I'm ready to hit the second reader. We'll see.

Funny how this increase in school work and work work has triggered a push for me to eat really well. You'd think I'd be chasing fast food and sushi on-the-go, but I get little satisfaction out of not eating well and I'm using meal preparation as break time. My only break time. Sad, I know.

For dinner tonight, I prepared a spicy snapper fillet with steamed broccoli and purple kale. I had to sprinkle the kale with melted butter and salt, it's not a taste I'm used to. Anyone have interesting recipes for kale? It's in season right now. What is kale anyways? In French, they call it cabbage, are they in the same family?

Fitting the pieces of the puzzle

My last three days were spent in a workshop on sustainability reporting, stakeholder engagements and assurance. After reading about these topics all semester for my project, my head was filled with disconnected concepts and my own interpretation of what all the theory meant. After the workshop, the pieces of the puzzle are finally fitting together and I was able to learn about real-life applications of these concepts. Nothing short of impressive.

Now, I get to digest all this new information and review a few sections in my project report. My lack of experience made me connect dots too quickly and state grand conclusions that are not as black and white as I initially thought. My project report will be available online after it's been verified and approved, and will be searchable like so many other academic papers. The workshop has increased my confidence in what I am about to publish: it might actually be sound and useful information :-)

I'm enjoying the cold snap in Vancouver. We've seen ground frost every morning and the temperature never increases over two-digits. I prefer this to rain, although if you ask me to pick between -20 and rain, I'll probably vote for the wet weather. The cooler temperatures mean that we've received quite a bit of snow on the mountains. Whistler is already open. I'll see if I can manage a ski trip once the semester is over, it would be nice to play in the snow.

What's that bug?

Oy! Almost ten days since the last post. I'm alive friends, just busy putting the finishing touches to my MBA project and getting everyone at work more or less coordinated on two other major projects. I'm surprised I don't mix things up more often.

So, I found this (see Fast Isopod picture) crawling around my carpet the other day. Did look too scary, but still wanted to know what it was. And have I found the most amazing reference (with plenty of pictures) about common bugs found around homes. No worries, the biggest and most dangerous all live in the Southern States or Australia. I do however remember this (see House Centipede picture) crawling up the wall in Annie's bathroom, when she was living on the Plateau. And this is a more of less frequent visitor in my kitchen. Ah yes, there's also this, which we found in our clothes left hanging outside at my parents' in the summer. Good times! Isn't this a cool site?

Determined

I'm spending the next four days (Monday is Remembrance Day and I took Tuesday off) writing the report for my final applied project. I've collected enough data and conducted enough interviews, it's time to put all my thoughts on paper (well, technically, on hardrive).

This is it. By Tuesday night, I should be able to send a long Word document to my project supervisor.

Wish me luck. And yes, I'm backing up daily. I know a student who had to take one extra semester to work on his final project because his laptop's hardrive crashed and the only copy of the file he had was unrecoverable. He never even printed a copy and had to rewrite the entire report...