internationalia

such a grammar freak...

2008-12-02T20:24:00.000-08:00

you know you're in a bad state when you finally solve a problem in MS Word that had been plaguing you for months and get visibly excited...

I review translated tech docs for one client. comparing the original Japanese with the translated English. finding mistakes, etc.

each document ends with a copyright statement that is set off within a pasted graphic. the text can be edited. the client's policy is to treat the copyright year as a document variable.

okay. I can do that in Word. File, Properties... yadda, yadda, yadda...

except, what happens when the copyright spans multiple years?

grammatically, you are required to separate the years with an en-dash. not a minus sign, hyphen or plain dash. an en-dash.

Word handles these normally within text by auto-converting them for you. it assumes you learned how to type on a typewriter and would have learned to type two hyphens ('--') when an en-dash was desired, and Word automagically converts the hyphens into one en-dash ('–').

except...

you can't do that within a document properties field.

grumble, grumble, lousy Microsoft, grumble...

nor, sadly, is the Insert menu available, so you can't use the Insert, Symbols workaround...

but then something occurred to me...

I found this web page a few weeks back out of my desire to spell my clients' names correctly within Gmail. it's Hervé, not Herve...

and today, out of the blue, it occurred to me...

a Eureka, jump-out-of-the-bath, moment...

there must be an ALT combination for en-dashes...

and sure enough... ALT-0150

at last, problem solved!

if only my issues with my lawyer could be handled this easily... (wink)

things I've done before...

2008-12-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

(this is from Julie, who got it from Shawna and Kathy, who got it from...)

Bold what you've done and all that.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang or played a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Driven across the Golden Gate Bridge
23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Hitch-hiked
42. Seen a geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie or television show (the news doesn't count)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Swam with dolphins
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Visited Machu Picchu
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone hang gliding
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp historic site
67. Won more than $100 in a lotto
68. Got flowers for no reason
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar or escargot
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Read the entire Bible
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Saved someone's life
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Walked the Scottish Highlands
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Had a baby
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book reading group
93. Lost a loved one
94. Walked in Jerusalem
95. Wrote and had a story or book published
96. Ridden a horse
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee or bitten by a poisonous snake
100. Read an entire book in one day
101. Built a home computer from pieces
102. Cooked a whole turkey for a special dinner
103. Made Christmas presents rather than buying them
104. Performed on stage for pay
105. Seen the Rosetta Stone in person
106. Visited the Smithsonian
107. Touched a piece of the Berlin Wall
108. Served at a soup kitchen
109. Memorized a poem
110. Watched a woman giving birth in person
111. Visited Angkor Wat
112. Lost more than 50 pounds
113. Seen the Pyramids at Giza in person
114. Flown in a helicopter
115. Sung karaoke
116. Bought a house or condo
117. Dyed your hair an unnatural color
118. Brewed alcohol
119. Driven across the Golden Gate Bridge
120. Had a "coming out" party
121. Got a tattoo
122. Went skydiving
123. Got a college degree
124. Climbed the steps at the Colosseum in Rome
125. Cooked 30 meals in 30 days

politics is insanity

2008-11-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

what a week.

from being over the moon about Obama.

to being outraged over Prop Hate.

to my experience last night...

I attended something called the Creative City Cabaret.

the best things about it? it was organized by a good friend, Chris, and the DJ work prior to the show was done by Chris' partner, Matt.

Vancouver is gearing up for municipal elections on 15 November. mayor, city council, the parks board and the school board.

to run, all you need is $100 and 25 signatures.

as you might imagine, this significantly lowers the bar to entry.

officially, I believe there are upwards of ten people running for mayor. most are independents, but there were some political parties I had not heard of, including the Work Less Party (go, Betty!) and the Nude Garden Party.

... pause...

so where were we? ah yes, the cabaret.

this was an opportunity for candidates to flex their political wings and appeal to voters in a non-traditional way. it was a talent show, basically. a sort of Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, let's put on a show! kind of affair.

there was legitimate talent and humor on display. Betty, the 80-year-old firebrand who heads the Work Less Party can tap dance like you'd never believe. amazing. her passion for politics and people serves her well in her tap shoes.

the woman, pardon me for forgetting her name, who sang Patsy Cline's Crazy, sadly, a capella, was also amazing, although I might be biased. she was, as we say, family.

the front-runners in the mayor's contest are both fairly decent guitar players. Gregor Robertson, the, it must be said, more attractive of the two, joined with with two other members of the Vision coalition to present a voters' guide, in an homage to Tom Lehr's The Elements (to the tune A Modern Major-General).

and Peter Ladner, who I had honestly thought to be despicable (for attempting to bail out Olympic developers secretly this past week) until I actually saw and heard him, performed songs he himself had written. wow.

there's also an amazing trans-woman, strikingly beautiful in personality and face, even though I think she picked up some styling tips from Sarah Palin, named Jamie Lee Hamilton. her campaign buttons are glorious: Vote for Jamie Lee: She's Different! I missed her act, though, as nature had called me away...

and then there were the stinkers.

the boos and groans from the audience made us all wish for a vaudevillian hook. it was painful to watch...

and painful to hear, as well, because two mayoral candidates had the appalling lack of tact and intellect to attempt stand-up comedy, which should now be known as the last refuge of scoundrels.

I suppose anyone who thinks they have no talent might be pardoned for thinking they could at least tell jokes.

but surely, surely, surely, you'd refrain from telling the worst kind of jokes.

oh, the misogyny. oh, the crudeness. oh, the trans- and homophobia... and the racism!

jokes that were last heard in a locker room thirty years ago were sadly resurrected.

I felt particularly badly for the voters who had brought their children and therefore had to continue to herd them out of the auditorium every time one of those reprobates took to the stage...

could you imagine such a thing in US politics?

a talent show?

at the municipal level, surely... I remember seeing Greg Nickels, now mayor of Seattle, pulling balls at Gay Bingo, stoically enduring Glamazonia's barbs and wit.

but I could never imagine any of last nights motley misanthropes running for anything in the US...

dear heavens!

farm animals

2008-11-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

it's an interesting experience to be involved in an American election from a foreign country.

Bill Clinton became president while I was in Japan, and while I voted for him, it wasn't that exciting a moment as last night was, as I read the RSS feeds (thank you, Nate Silver) over and over.

last night I was elated.

this morning, not so much.

in fact, the more time goes by, the angrier I'm getting.

let me explain...

there were several interesting propositions on the ballot in California this election cycle.

prop 2 ensures the animals we eat will be treated humanely. in other words, no more factory farming, with pigs, cows and chickens penned in so close they cannot move, standing in their own shit.

I am totally in favor of putting an end to factory farming in the US. between that and the corn lobby, US agricultural has become an extension of petroleum products. thanks, but no thanks.

prop 8 was put forth and supported heavily but Christian fundamentalists and Mormons (an odd couple if ever there was one--both believe the other to be apostate). its aim to to put an end to the recently granted right of same-sex couples to marry in that state, by enshrining discrimination and hate in the state constitution (with the wording, 'marriage shall consist of a union between a man and a woman.').

now, the count is not yet over, and the opponents of this atrocity might yet prevail, and even if we don't, count on lawsuits galore, but what struck me this morning (thanks to an article written by Autumn Sandeen) was that way more people voted in favor of prop 2 than voted against prop 8.

think about that.

apparently, in California, a place I have visited many times and home to many great friends, it is easier to be kind to animals than it is to consider the civil rights of other human beings!

WTF?!

my proposal, for the time being, is to start driving around to LDS churches and tabernacles and to plant lawn signs that read: Hate Lives Here.

I know a few Mormons, and not every Mormon was in favor of their church's taking of such a costly and bigoted position, but the LDS church's elders endorsed that project and encouraged, nay threatened, in some cases, its membership to cough up cash for it.

so no, we won't put yard signs at the home of individual Mormons. they aren't to blame. their church is, however, and people need to be reminded of that, over and over and over. hate.

Whose America now? Not Gore Vidal's

2008-10-31T17:40:00.001-07:00

Mr Gumbel,

This sorry excuse for writing clearly reflects your obvious lack of a sense of humor and what clearly seems to be a lack of having ever read any of Mr Vidal's fiction.

Mr Vidal has never been, nor ever will be, reactionary. He is a progressive. You are setting yourself up as the next crypto-fascist, to succeed Buckley.

It's a shame you didn't go full bore and drag out his homosexuality as further proof of your (idiotic) thesis...

Do the rest of us a favor and leave Mr Vidal be. Save your venom for those who truly deserve it, like, say, the current administration of asshats.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

up for air

2008-10-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

between the IRS mess and a massive translation job, I feel like I've been somewhat submerged.

it's been a beautiful autumn here. I've noticed that, at least, as I drive Hiro to and from work every day. we've had less rain than normal and the trees have been beautiful.

and Halloween is coming, which, in Canada, means fireworks. it's one of the few days a year people are allowed to legally set off fireworks so shops selling fireworks have spring up like mushrooms after a rain. a few days back, when some over-anxious neighborhood kids set off some, my inner New Yorker thought, gun shots?! but no... thankfully...

in the middle of all the craziness, Hiro and I managed to take a weekend off two weeks ago, and spent a great time with friends from Washington and BC. it was right after my lawyer had finally convinced the IRS that I had not moved to Canada to evade them, but had done so for love. that seemed to have melted a certain bureaucratic heart, and the levies were lifted! shortly thereafter, my car payment was paid, and at roughly the same time our landlords got the rent money. whew...

thankfully, there's still lots of work to do, so I'll get back to it. just thought I'd at least blog a bit more...

voting

2008-10-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

I got my absentee ballot last weekend and I voted yesterday.

since I'm not that familiar with people running for judge positions, I did use a cheat sheet, but otherwise, I know King County and Washington State well enough to vote against Eyman and his idiocies, against that idiot Sheriff Reichert (great work on the Green River case!) and against anything with the word 'non-partisan' in it (which means that Republicans assume they can buy a position if it passes).

since I no longer have my ballot, all I can say is that I voted on nearly strict party lines. I would never vote for anyone named for a cartoon dog (hear that, Rossi?), and I am so ready for President Obama!

winter's first haiku

2008-10-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

(copyright 2008, Brian Watson)

漂って
雲雲の中
朝陽の色

ただよって
くもぐものなか
あさひのいろ

wafting
amidst the clouds
the colors of the morning sun!

winter's first puree

2008-10-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

in spite of the deadlines swarming about like beeves at a bazaar, I made Hiro some dinner last night. the roast pork was wonderful, and I'm almost wishing I hadn't packed the last of it into Hiro's lunch today....

but the crowning glory was my puree...

into a 375 degree oven, on a foil-wrapped baking sheet, place:

1 acorn squash, halved, seeded and cut sides down

1/4 to 1/2 kabocha squash (depending on how big it is), seeded and cut into wedges

1 carrot, peeled and cut into chunks

1/2 sweet yellow onion, peeled and quartered

1 honeycrisp (or macintosh) apple, quartered and cored

bake for 1 hour. remove from oven. into a large saucepan over medium heat, combine the above (removing the squash flesh from the rinds, which you wouldn't want to eat) with:

3 tablespoons of butter

a sprinkling of cinnamon

half a can of crushed or chunk pineapple, with juice

sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

stir to blend, and then insert stick blender and mush everything today, cackling maniacally.
continue to heat until some of the squash moisture has flown and the puree is thick enough to mound on a plate, at which point all who partake will be rendered ecstatic!

winter's first kiss

2008-10-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

looking out from my porch this morning, I saw a delicate dusting of snow on the mountains to the north. so much more serene than the sudden blizzard that blocked the Coquihalla Monday night...

a first slide show

2008-10-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

I finally had a few moments to review my photos from Folsom. in spite of the crass tourism there, there was a lot to make me smile, from handsome men, to fun t-shirts, to the inimitable Varla Jean Merman, to some lovely tushies sparkling in the sunlight, to a drag queen getting intimate with her hot dog.

sublime, meet the ridiculous

2008-10-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

sitting in a cold house, afraid to pay the heating bills this year, because they were so insanely high last year. sipping hot tea and wearing two sweatshirts to keep warm on the first morning this season the temperature fell below zero (Celsius), as my red hibiscus blooms beside me with raucous abandon.

driving Hiro to work this morning, and seeing a massive river of fog flowing above the south arm of the Fraser, spreading out to cover the delta near Howe Sound. thinking of poetry to do justice to this great exhalation of beauty.

coming home to read my email and start my work day, to find an eviction notice for late rent payment this month. we still have five more days to pay, but with all my income tied up in the ongoing IRS insanity, which is also threatening to engulf my car, I'm struggling to avoid the big panic as I wait for word from the lawyer (who just called).

so to help ease the anxiety, I present some of the photos I took at Strybing a few weeks ago...

the input from putin

2008-10-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

hey, Sarah Palin

2008-10-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

of course, I'm already in Canada. if anyone needs help moving, let me know. =)

whence America?

2008-10-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

to begin, read this and this...

if ever there was a time for paranoid conspiracy theories, this might be it.

nationalized banks? a non-existing credit market? and US troops (not reserves) on US soil to quell 'civil unrest'?

is Naomi Wolf right?

tokyo flashbacks

2008-10-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

yesterday's weather was obnoxious. lots of wind and rain. and I had to drive down to Bellingham and back in it, and the Prius is a lightweight in the face of strong winds, so it was a challenge at times.

but as I was heading back up the I5, I remembered the typhoon season in Japan. of course, that kind of weather usually lasts much longer than the storm we had, and unlike our weather, once a typhoon blows through, you are blessed with a few days of utterly gorgeous, cloud-free weather.

there were two typhoons, in particular, that stick in my memory.

the first happened while I was still living out in Saitama, outside of Tokyo, and before I had met Hiro. at the time, I was involved in organizing conferences for people in the JET Programme, and Saitama Prefecture maintains a really good conference center in a town called Ranzan. only problem is that there are few convenient ways to get there. yes, there's a train line (and I can only remember a few places that I visited during my years in Japan that weren't accessible by train), but it was on a long, slow, line, and the transfers to get to that line were many and annoying.

at the time, I drove around on a Honda Tact. that's a 50cc scooter. and yes, I was a sight, a big glob of a guy, on a little red (of course!) scooter. and I would go anywhere on my scooter. so I drove the 45km (I think) to Ranzan. it was all on fairly unused roads, so I wasn't buzzed by that many trucks, and on the way out, the weather was gorgeous.

but during the conference, a typhoon blew in, and when it was time to go, the winds and rains were howling up a holy mess. I had no rain gear with me. my helmet would keep my eyes dry, but then I scrounged around and found some big black garbage bags. instant poncho! I think I used four of them to fashion coverings for my arms, legs and torso with my backpack strapped on underneath.

even still, that was a long ride home. again, thankfully, there were few other cars on the road, but the way the rain was blown onto my helmet's face protector, I could still barely see, so I chugged along at a very low speed. and the wind was pretty intense, as well, because by the time I made it back to my apartment, I had to stand in the entryway, where normally all you'd take off was your shoes, and remove every last thread of clothing because I still had managed to become soaked to the skin. all I could remember thinking was, thank goodness for my kerosene heater!

the second memorable storm happened while I was living and working in Tokyo. it was an early storm, that year, at the beginning of August, and we were running a week-long conference in a very large hotel, near the new capitol building, in Shinjuku. at the conference's end, to celebrate our success and its completion, one of my coworkers took me and another organizer up to the top floor of the hotel for an expensive lunch.

I think it was the 45th floor. tall building like that in Japan use an interesting system to keep them from coming down in earthquakes. essentially, there is a large weight atop the building, and it shifts to provide an equilibrium when the building moves. that day, we found out that the system also kicks in when the building is buffeted by strong typhoon winds.

so as we sat eating, we found ourselves rocking along with the building. like being on a ship at sea, the motion is most noticeable on the highest floors, and you could see the water in your glass move. I think we finished lunch in record time, perhaps out of fear that we might not keep it down, but it was a terrifying experience.

all that, from just a little wind and rain on I5...

fleeting fame

2008-10-03T13:03:00.001-07:00

my first guest post on bilerico, a political/gay blog I follow, was based on a post I made here last week, called 'now a hypocrite'. you can see it and the feedback here.

the tough thing will be thinking about what to blog about next...

don't vote

2008-10-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

divide and conquer

2008-10-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of two elections right now: the USA and Canada.

I've known for a long time that both the Democrats and the Republicans (but especially the latter) find it of strategic value to identify certain demographics, isolate them verbally (through the use of labels), and then either seek their support or, perhaps more commonly, demonize them.

the use of labels and identity politics serves two purposes, to my eye. having a group that you believe shares your political interests gives you a sense of security. it's not just you against the political establishment. you can lobby more effectively as a group.

but then, the use of labels also helps to galvanize those opposed to whoever it is they believe to comprise that label. you want more conservative voters to turn out? put anti-gay measures on the ballot. want more liberal/progressive voters to turn out? paint your opponent or her/his supporters as biblical literalists, or backwards philistines, or some other form of troglodyte.

the real problem with this approach is that it takes the focus away from the really big issues. the environment. health care. whether we should be a nation of peacemakers or warmongers. whether corporations should have more access to tax cuts, preferential legislation and rights (through lobbying and donations) than the individuals who comprise a democracy.

why don't politicians want people to think about those issues? because, in general terms, americans are nearly all in agreement. to the right and to the left, we all want to leave this world better than the way we found it. we all feel it is good and truly american for everyone to have access to health care. we all feel that a strong defense is better than any offense and that the act of waging peace makes the world safer. we all feel inherently that it should be government of, for and by the people, and not corporations.

since most of us are in agreement, we'd be a political force to be reckoned with. if only we weren't caught up in our labeled identity.

you see, it's wrong for politicians to use labels. but we're also culpable when we accept them. me? I'm not just gay (or male, or well-educated, or middle-class...). I'm american.

the same political games are being played in Canada now, as well. the five major parties (can you imagine that, americans?) are all trying to expand their base of support, and they do it by grouping and labeling people.

immigrants should vote Liberal. families should vote Conservative. parents should vote Green. francophones should vote BQ. progressives should vote NDP.

I haven't lived here long enough yet to know what it is they politicians are afraid of, what the opinions are that unite Canadians, but I bet it combines bits and pieces of each party. perhaps the NDP has recognized this. it's hard to say so far.

maybe the notion of platforms in an election is backwards. we the people should decide on a platform and then ask our politicians to support that.

Fulsome Street Festival

2008-10-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hiro and I were blessed recently, with two friends who decided we needed a break from the insanity of the IRS right now, and offered us guest passes on the airline they work for.

since we also had a friend who was offering to let us stay with him and his partner in San Francisco, we decided to go there. that would make it my fifth trip to SF and Hiro's third trip.

we timed the trip so that we could attend, for the first time, the Folsom Street Festival, as it celebrated its 25th anniversary. everyone said the festival was wonderful, exciting, sexy...

and of course, I'd be able to photograph flowers in SF, and see friends.

not only were we happy to see the friends who put us up (because they are wonderful, Dave and Bill!), but I also had the chance to see an old ex-lover/friend from Japan whom I hadn't seen for ten years now, as well as two friends from high school, whom I hadn't seen for fourteen and eighteen years, respectively.

Yasu was the guy I had gone out with for a few months the summer before I met Hiro. he's adorable, and we traveled together to NY and to LA while we together. I had a crush on him, but his friends counselled me to keep things light because, as they said, Yasu is a butterfly who likes to flit from flower to flower. I realized that was true, eventually, but I was glad that he and I stayed friends.

of course, that was sixteen years ago, so we are both much older. Yasu is 53! he doesn't look it, but he still looked older than I remembered. that said, he hasn't changed a bit in most other ways. still smoking (grumble, grumble), still ready for a quick laugh, still nearly always smiling, especially in his eyes, and still a big sweetheart. the wonderful things is that right after Hiro and I got serious, Yasu settled down with another friend of mine in Tokyo, Greg, and they've been together ever since. I suppose that means that Yasu and I were bachelor parties for one another...

seeing my friends from high school was even more wonderful.

Arnie, who I haven't seen since 1989 or 1990, looks nearly the same as he did in high school. as skinny as a promise, and so handsome. he (and all of his siblings, I was happy to hear) is a success as a doctor further down the peninsula, and he has married a wonderful woman and has had a beautiful son.

Mark, who met Hiro and I when we still lived in Japan, probably around 1996 or so, looked great as well. another very handsome man, perhaps even more so with the gray shot through his thick hair. he's a professor, still married to the beautiful woman he introduced us to in Japan so long ago, and has two adorable children.

I have to say that I felt a little outclassed at first, being a mere freelance translator, but then I remembered that it took me a while to figure out how much I love being a freelancer and what else I love to do, so I am still glad I chose this path.

we talked about all of our old friends, filling each other in on who was where and who was doing what, and then started talking about what we remember from school.

when I first started there (at the Rockland Country Day School), it was a private school for grades 5 through 12. over the years it expanded down to kindergarten, but since it was such a small school (there were seven in my class when I graduated), some of our lasting friendships were with people in other years. like Chaim who graduated a year before I did, and Kaoru and Mark who graduated two years after.

Mark remembered a lot. stuff I have totally forgotten. like a musical that I was apparently in, and sang in, and then something happened and I couldn't finish the performances. in all honesty, I have no idea what that was all about. it sounds like a version of Robin Hood (the musical!) done like the cast of Gilligan's Island did Hamlet: with lots of other classical tunes and new lyrics pasted in. Mark said I played Friar Tuck. which figures. =)

as I said, we also went down to attend the Folsom Street Fair. the fair stretches out over several blocks of Folsom in the SoMa district in SF, and is, in many ways, like an ordinary street fair, with performers, food courts, numerous porta-potties, and such, but its attraction lies in being a bazaar of the sexually bizarre. a caravansary of kink.

I suppose that when it got started it might have appeared to be more revolutionary. after all, sado-masochism and bondage and discipline devotees were considered to be on the fringes of gay (and straight) society.

but my overall impression of the fair was that it had devolved into a sort of glorified freak show, an almost Disney version of kink.

to be sure, there were the true devotees there. the human urinal. the true bondage masters (like Master Van Darkholme). but they seemed to be reduced to mere curiosities as the crowds gathered around to gawk and enjoy the emotion of shock mixed with mild titillation. is this what Kink has come to? a side-show attraction, complete with barkers and ticket-takers?

I suppose I was also more than put off by the scores of people who used the fair as an excuse to show off. the girlfriends who wanted to be dominatrices for a day, and who subjected their boyfriends to various outfits, nearly all completed with a dog or pig mask. in that context, the humiliation aspect goes from shocking to silly.

there were many handsome men there, and it was nice to be in an environment where you could openly compliment them (without resorting to a dark and drunken bar). and it was wonderful to hear Miss Varla Jean Merman's (all too brief) set on the main stage.

but if we go again, I'd say we should go early in the day, before the heat and the crowds arrive, in the hope of seeing and/or meeting people who are interested in sharing their kink, and not simply being living dioramas for the masses to ogle.

now a hypocrite?

2008-09-22T09:30:00.001-07:00

when I moved back to the US in 1998 (yes, it's already been ten years!), I knew that I wanted to find a chorus to sing with. I had sung with some pretty prestigious groups in Japan, and had also conducted a small group as well, and wanted to keep singing.

as it was, a friend of mine from Japan was the accompanist for what was then the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus (it's now known as Sound Mosaic). after life in Japan, I thought the idea of an out chorus was good, and, after hearing them perform, I joined them.

I suppose I had heard of the Seattle Men's Chorus, but truth be told, I would never have guessed they were gay from the name alone. so I ignored them for a while.

once I learned that they were putting forth a gay-positive message with a gay membership, I had conflicting thoughts. jealous, because they had corporate sponsors, bigger audiences, etc., but also angry because they were using the closet to fool people. no frightening words like 'gay' in the title to scare off sponsors...

so I felt they were hypocrites.

and I had a great time with the SLGC. met many wonderful people, a lot of whom remain friends to this day. sang great music.

I stopped singing several years ago when the combination of jobs I do got more hectic, and then, after moving to Vancouver, and starting classes, I put singing further from my mind.

but then I met someone in a great small group, Phoenix, in Vancouver, and he encouraged me to audition. I did. vocally, I wasn't a great fit for the group. my timbre is a bit brassy and operatic sometimes. but I did find out something interesting. the director, in auditioning me, got me up to an A above middle C.

that's high, boys and girls. especially for someone like me who started his post-puberty singing career as a bass. A is tenor territory (and is, usually, rough for many tenors). I was shocked. and thrilled, but shocked.

then a good friend asked me to audition for the Vancouver Men's Chorus. and I didn't even think about the Seattle group until after the audition was successful and I was sitting with the tenor I section.

was I now a hypocrite? was this group in the closet?

you wouldn't think so if you saw a rehearsal, or posters for their concerts, or heard about their outreach work.

and I also remembered that the SLGC had just gone through a re-branding exercise. Sound Mosaic, they were now. since they are a mixed group, the terms 'lesbian' and 'gay' don't cover all the options involved. and a more evocative name is better than trying to include all the alphabet options to cover everyone (lesbian, gay, straight, bi, transsexual, transgender, queer and questioning, if I have it right).

so how does that work when we are all men in the chorus? are we all gay?

technically, the group is open to anyone, regardless of how they want to label themselves.

and, thinking more about it, the label thing is getting silly. I am not a label. if anything, my involvement in the bear community is teaching me how stupid people can get about labels. we have to create an ever-increasing set of labels to cover everyone who wants to associate with the bear community. bears, cubs, otters, wolves, polar bears, panda bears, trappers, hunters, goldilocks (straight women who like bears!), and perhaps even sows (women who identify as bears. female bears are sows.).

ultimately, someone said to me the other night, the only thing a label is good for is getting you in bed with someone. it's shorthand for what you want right now in terms of sex.

and of course, labels suit modern politics, which is about breaking the populace down into smaller groups that can be pitted, one against the other, to distract us from the issues that affect us all.

so I don't know how well the labels fit me anymore. how much I want a label anymore...

calculation error

2008-09-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

you know that things are going to go terribly wrong when, for example, you were thinking that you didn't owe any taxes for a given year, say, 2004, and then, before calculating any deductions, your lawyer thinks you will owe roughly $800 (which should go to zero after deductions are calculated), and then your lawyer finds out that the IRS thinks you owe...

ready for this?

more than twenty-five thousand dollars.

gulp... panic time...

and for whatever reason, 25K is a magic number at the IRS. it's probably what triggered the audit in the first place. apparently, anyone who is found to be owing more than that, and who hasn't, according to the IRS, paid, he or she can be sit back and watch as their case is moved from a civil proceeding to a criminal proceeding.

copious sweat...

now, my lawyer, good man, covered all possible options. the IRS could be serious about putting me in jail for what they believe to be tax fraud or they could, and perhaps more likely, simply be trying the scare the flying spaghetti monster out of me.

of course, it's an exercise in cold-sweat fear not knowing which it is.

and why don't we know?

because the person handling my case for the IRS in Bellevue is currently on holiday. not in the office. absent. until next week. which is when my lawyer is at the Hague for a conference (yes, he's that good). of course, in this day and age, when the man from the IRS calls my lawyer, his Blackberry will let him know, and he can get in touch immediately.

my new fondest hope is that proceedings have not transitioned to criminal yet.

stay tuned for more details...

idiot politics comes north

2008-08-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

you know, I had honestly thought that I would be leaving behind what I called idiot politics when I left the US.

what are idiot politics, you ask?

it's when you speak to the voters as if they are idiots.

the classic example was noun-verb-9/11 Giuliani and now noun-verb-POW McCain...

but the Conservatives, the pro-business, saber-rattling (yes, in Canada... that means Arctic sovereignty...), right-wing Christian coddling party of the prime minister, the very bland Stephen Harper, are now running a series of radio ads here in BC.

mind you, there are no elections coming up. there are rumors of elections, but nothing has been announced.

but to prepare the electorate for such elections, the Conservatives are running ads that are attempting to trash Stephane Dion and the Liberal Party.

BC is similar to Washington State in that the population centers are strongly liberal in outlook, whereas the further into and beyond the mountains you get, the more conservative things are, but of course, numerically, it's a minority.

so regardless of the fact that running anti-Liberal radio ads is a waste of money...

all the ads have a similar format, purporting to be actual phone messages left on whatever answering machine the Conservatives have set up to collect criticism of Dion. these are purely attack ads. they criticize the Liberals as being not ready to lead Canada, as untrustworthy on the issues.

but they are treating the voters like idiots.

when I, and I admit, I can't vote here, but when I hear these ads, all I can think is, what assholes these Conservatives are! I talked to a few Canadians as well and the reaction was similar.

instead of coming forth with a positive message that would tell us why we should vote for the Conservatives, what they would do differently, all we get is pabulum about not voting Liberal.

pure piffle!

to whoever it was in the Conservative Party who thought Rovian tactics were a good idea: think again! even in the US, voters aren't idiots. Canadian voters even less so.

I'd gone to heaven

2008-08-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

for most people, the DMV, licensing office, county auditor's office, whatever you want to call it, is an exercise in hell. long lines. taking numbers. the potential for being in the wrong line and/or having the wrong number. dealing with sadistic bureaucrats (who mistake you for your partner's father, but that's another story)...

but yesterday, I went to heaven. I swear.

it was time to renew my Prius' license tabs. I did the actual renewal process online, and paid my $101... definitely not heavenly, I know. but I chose to pick up the tabs at the closest agency in Washington, which would happen to be within the Whatcom County Auditor's Office in the county seat, Bellingham. just 25 minutes from the border. the Audito's Office is in the same building as the County Courthouse, and there is an interesting display of public art outside of it (which added to the heavenly feeling).

in a tribute to the Lummi, the Nooksack, the Samish and the other Coast Nations' tribes that the land was taken from, an artist designed a tribute to a totem pole, with various members of the local pantheons descending the pole to a canoe, which was paddled fore and aft by natives. amidships, and on either side of the pole, sat two anglos, dressed as Abe Lincoln, in black suits and stovepipe hats. except that someone, and I admire his dark humor, felt it fitting to decapitate one of the white men. it was rather startling at first to see the headless passenger, but then I laughed. indeed, how white people keep losing their heads over real estate!

anyway, back to the story...

I parked the Prius and, feeling optimistic, put only an hour's worth of coins into the meter. I know a visit to these types of places had taken me longer in the past, but I was hopeful.

imagine my surprise when I entered the office and found merely a row of desks, behind each one a clerk pleasantly working, with a roped yet utterly empty queue stretching before me. no one. not a soul in line.

I went immediately to the head of the non-existent line and was called up. the clerk noted that I had filed online and presented me with my new registration and tabs immediately. instead of an hour, I was there for less than two minutes!

O que e isso? Que paradiso e!

Truman Capote reincarnated as a Hutt

2008-08-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

I saw Clone Wars tonight and, frankly, I was insulted.

Lucas has apparently seen fit to fall into an old Hollywood stereotype and has cast a new villian, Ziro the Hutt, uncle to Jabba, as a lisping, mincing drag queen. Sort of like Truman Capote, but better looking. (rimshot!)

but seriously... do we really need to keep working that tired old cliche?

knock it off, George!

such a broad palette

2008-08-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

I was challenged to take this food test on a blog called Very Good Taste... I was very surprised by how many of the 100 I have tasted, and how few things I'm certain I wouldn't...
I suppose that life in Japan (with my business trips to Europe) exposed me to a lot of these...

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (minus the cigars, which make me gag)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal (might not be able to take this... very spicy foods don't agree with me)

44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (why did this make the list?)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (dirt? really?)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (this I would NOT eat)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

the holiday weekend

2008-08-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Monday was BC Day, the province's sesquicentennial celebration.

we celebrated in myriad ways. I'm still tired!

on Friday night, we went to the movies. the plan was to see Dark Knight, but the theatre was packed, so we settled, happily, for Hellboy II. gotta love Ron Perlman. beautiful movie.

on Saturday we got (temporarily) rid of our house guest from Japan, transferring him to a homestay for a while. since he came to study English, and since Hiro and I speak a lot of Japanese here at home, I think it was good that he stays with people who speak more English than we do.

that night, we went to see the finale for the annual fireworks competition, Celebration of Light. we chose a new viewing location, this time in Kitsilano, directly in line with the launching barge in English Bay. we arrived early enough to find parking within blocks of Hadden Park and to find a space along the trail by the water's edge. perfect location. a freelance photographer, working for the Seattle Times, set up next to us, and we spent a great time talking shop.

after the fireworks, and my clever threading of the back streets to get us out of Kits and to the airport, we picked up two friends, Bill and yes, another Hiro! from San Francisco. Hiro(michi) and I know the other Hiro(taka) from Japan, and we met Bill in Seattle last spring.

we all got home and crashed, and then got up relatively early on Sunday to head out for Gay Pride. our friends Larry and Art had invited us for a pre-parade snack at their place and graciously offered us their parking spot mere blocks from the parade route.

they decorated with the most clever balloons! I think David especially enjoyed them.

the parade itself was a little more fabulous than I remember from years past. it suffers from timing issues, of course, with some large spaces between groups, and from length... we left after watching the 147th contingent march on by. that's a lot of 'mos! there was only one quizzical entry. I'm not sure why a group demanding a new inquiry into the 9/11 attacks would march in a gay pride parade... in Canada...

when the Vancouver Men's Chorus came marching by, guess which chorister caught our eyes!

we need lunch, and stat! we found what we were looking for at Moxie's on Davie. calamari salad! what a wonderful idea! and so tasty.

Hiro and me at lunch.

after that, we walked back down to Art and Larry's place for their post-parade party. lots of fun. they are both great hosts. the penis-shaped cakes were a big hit! but here's a hint, Larry, combining things just because they resemble genitalia once combined is not always wise... next year, let's not do cocktail weiners with mini-marshmallows...

Larry and Hiro at a tender moment!

and then, on to Bear Bounce, the annual VanCubz extravaganza. it was a great party this year. the music, of course, was excellent, and spending an evening on a huge balcony looking out at a beautiful downtown nightscape with hundreds of men was fantastic. it was particularly nice to meet all those people we had only known online up until then.

from left: Bill (from SF), me, Jordi & Ron (from Victoria), Hiro

since Bill and Hirotaka needed to be at the airport early on Monday, we left Bounce around midnight.

the airport run was uneventful, and we spent a quiet Monday recuperating. it was a great weekend, and we hope we can share it with more friends in the years to come!

the second cookie recipe

2008-08-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

this morning, I baked a batch of these cookies.

the interesting thing about that recipe is that once done, the batter is refrigerated for up to 36 hours. oh, and you sprinkle the cookies with sea salt before baking.

I can see why that recipe has such appeal. the cookies have a classic crisp crumb. all that butter and sugar is probably what does it, but I bet the resting in the fridge doesn't hurt.

and the salt is a great addition. it plays off the chocolate perfectly.

I run the risk of being declared a wimp, but I truly cannot say whether this recipe is better than Kat's. the two recipes are so fundamentally different. graham cracker crumbs vs. cake flour. condensed milk vs. eggs and sugar.

and since both recipes result in the crispest cookies, which Hiro loves, I can't complain. his only gripe is that even when we store the cookies in air-tight containers, they tend to get a little moisture from the air and lose their crunchy appeal. I guess we now know what to do with all the dessicant packs that come in every pack of Japanese crackers we've ever bought...

what a beautiful nephew!

2008-07-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

my beloved sister just had her second son, Jack Edward, last Friday morning, and she sent out pictures this morning.

here he is:

and this is him with his big brother, Patrick:

mayonnaise mumbles

2008-07-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

another recipe I've been working on of late is for mayonnaise.

since I swoon for Jaime Oliver (although still waiting for him to live up to his earlier billing and truly be a naked chef), I thought I'd try his.

it works brilliantly. whisk an egg yolk with a little mustard and then slowly add two cups of olive oil. and then season as desired.

the only problem is the oil. the first time I made it, I started with canola, and then moved to extra virgin olive oil (and no, Ms Ray, I refuse to call it EVOO). no breaks at all.

but since extra virgin is more expensive, I bought some regular old olive oil at Costco for the next attempt.

no go. I tried three different times, and that olive oil will not make mayonnaise. I'm not sure why, but it's back to canola for me for now, or maybe canola and grapeseed.

is it worth the hassle? of course! homemade mayonnaise is definitely worth whisk-elbow!

cookie quest

2008-07-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was a blog entry that started it...

when Orangette said she had the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, I was intrigued.

I know you might not be shocked to read that Hiro can be a particular eater. it's not that he has a broad range of dislikes. he just likes to critique things.

he's particular about cookies as well. they have to be crisp. perhaps that's why I've shied away from making them. and perhaps why Orangette's recipe had me considering the possibility of making them.

but first, I had to try another recipe. my friend Kat asked me to give her recipe a go.

Kat's recipe is compelling for a few reasons. first off, it doesn't use eggs or sugar. just sweetened condensed milk, creamed with butter, for wet ingredients. and then, there's the use of graham cracker crumbs instead of a lot more flour. and although I didn't use coconut, as called for, I did love the combination of semi-sweet chips and pecans.

these cookies, which I made last night while Hiro and his friend Kuro were out roaming the town, are indeed crisp. Hiro gave his immediate thumbs-up. very rare praise. no criticisms either. also rare praise. I like the way the graham cracker crumbs provide a subtler backdrop for the chips and pecans, which also taste great together.

from its incredible ease to make, this recipe definitely gets bookmarked to be made again. I'm fairly certain I've got a hit on my hands, thanks again to Kat.

edibility

2008-07-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

it's bug season.

countless theories abound as to why bugs are more attracted to certain people than to others. I think I am fairly lucky in that I only seem to get bitten when we go camping, which is to say, when the biting bug population is at its maximum.

Hiro, on the other hand, is not so lucky.

it might be our respective blood types. I have an unconfirmed theory that people of blood type O are less vulnerable. Hiro's type A. I'm type O.

on Canada Day last week, up at Cypress, Hiro seems to have attracted a swarm of no-see-ums. he has bites all over his legs and arms that were so itchy that they became slightly infected.

but now, we're on flea alert.

Hime goes out regularly, and wears a flea collar, but when Hiro started brushing him yesterday, we found fleas and nits. so... Hiro gave Hime a good washing with anti-flea shampoo and we stripped the bed completely.

Hiro's pretty annoyed that I don't get bitten like he does. There's not much I can do about that, though, except follow his orders when it's time to get a new med for the bites or to hang the bedding out in the sun.

down and back

2008-07-08T10:08:00.001-07:00

the last pile of paperwork has been delivered to my lawyer's office, and short of their needing copies of anything else from a bank, etc., I think I am done.

...whew...

there was a lot to go through.

it's somewhat cleansing to get that stuff organized and out, but it reminds me of what an idiot I've been to let it go for so long. now that it's done, though, I'm set to be ready for my 2008 taxes.

since our weekend was spent happily with friends, I ended up just piling all of the paperworks into my Uniqlo bag and heading south Monday morning. I got to West Seattle in about 2.5 hours after dropping Hiro off at work, and went straight to the Endolyne for coffee and to spread out those papers and start organizing them.

two hours later...

...whew...

I dropped everything off at the lawyer's office and touched base with him on my case. it'll be a while before everything is taken care of, he said, but, hopefully, the levy issue will be resolved in about a month's time.

I was talking to one of my aunts about this. she and I often talk because we have a lot in common. creative, but bad with money. anyway, she reminded me that my troubles with the IRS, although self-inflicted, are pretty common, and that one of her brothers had a similar problem a few years back, although he managed to work his way out of it just fine. perhaps there's a scofflaw gene in the Watson gene pool. I laughed at that.

in other news, I was happily surprised to learn that my new college, Langara, will not be charging me any international fees for the classes I'll start taking this fall, on typography and visual language. at last, a break!

...smile...

whence euphoria?

2008-07-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

I had a somewhat strange experience yesterday, the effects of which continue to linger on this morning.

I woke up like I usually do on wet, gray mornings, grumpily.

but as the day progressed, I kept feeling better and better.

it's been a long time since that happened. I'm usually so caught in the tension of work and money and (lately) the IRS that my feelings curl up into a little rock of begrudging crapitude.

what happened yesterday?

a friend of Hiro's came by to take us to lunch, because he wanted Hiro to model for him. the friend, Arthur, is a designer working in Hong Kong right now. Arthur is developing a line of t-shirts and accessories for the bear community, soon to be launched at ursusthebear.com, and he needed a model that was approximately Hiro's size.

I don't know why, but I was really happy that Arthur asked Hiro to do that. I love it when other men see the handsome in Hiro like I do. I helped them set up the camera and lights. we brought out my studio lighting, and then I left them alone.

I finished reading one of my favorite books: Michael Tolliver Lives, by Armistead Maupin. Maupin's Tales of the City series taught me, in a way, how to be a better person. how to interact with more people. when he came to Bellingham last year to speak, I brought that last book with me and had him sign it for me. it was a chance to meet one of my heroes.

and then a good friend of mine came over to talk. his wife and kids are away in Japan for the month, so he just came by to hang out, and we talked for more than an hour, he about his family, me about mine. he and I know each other from Japan, and it's always like a slow, warm hug to talk to him. I suppose it doesn't hurt that he's a professional counselor. =)

and then I just slowly spent the rest of the day writing and relaxing, feeling like I wanted to tell everyone I know how much I love them.

it's a nice feeling. I have to say.

spoiled

2008-07-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

weather has spoiled me.

when you move to the Pacific Northwest, a lot of things surprise you.

the winters aren't usually as wet as everyone is led to believe.

the summers are absolutely beautiful.

but to hear the natives talk sometimes...

if the thermometer goes above 80, it's 'too hot'...

if the humidity goes above 50%, it's 'so humid'...

especially after living in the New York and Tokyo areas, where summers are brutal attacks that you can only forbear with the aid of air-conditioning, extra-strength deodorant and a change of clothes on hand, where temperatures in 90s and humidity near the 100% level are standard fare...

and yet, it's been more than ten years since I moved here, and I find I am slowly becoming acclimated. as the old lady sings in Bernstein's Candide, I am so easily assimilated...

take today...

we had a break from the beautiful sunny weather and the day began with rain and clouds. no major storm, mind you, but enough to dump lots of moisture into the air.

and suddenly I was cravenly comparing the weather to that in Tokyo...

hardly...

the humidity is actually nice here. it feels refreshing almost...

now, if only I could get my laptop back, I'd be content...

mad scientist

2008-07-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

the other day we noticed something disturbing downstairs in our entryway.

ants.

they had apparently found a way to colonize the dirt underneath the front door's threshold, because there is now a long line of excavated dirt along it.

Hiro was in favor of blasting them with our cleaner solution from Trader Joe's, but I remembered reading something in my RSS feeds...

thanks to the folks at lifehacker.com, I found a way to kill ants using very simple ingredients... I went to the drugstore and bought some boric acid powder, and mixed that with sugar in roughly equal proportions within soda bottle lids. we're talking very small amounts of both. once the two were combined, I added a little bit of water to make a very thick paste. I placed that downstairs near the ants and lo and behold...

the ants are of course attracted to the sugar, and then the boric acid kills them dead!

...evil cackling commences...

scatalogia

2008-07-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

in other words, talking about poo..

it was a favorite topic of Mozart's, apparently. he used to save up poo and fart jokes for his mom.

and a couple of things reminded me of that today...

I was driving Hiro home from work and we passed a disposal truck. one of those trucks that sucks up the content from septic tanks. and atop his hood was a bug guard emblazoned, between two patriotic maple leaves, with the phrase: 'turd wrangler'.

...indeed...

and then I thought of the port-a-potty down at Christianson's, my favorite nursery in Mount Vernon. Washington State seems to have a collection of port-a-potty companies with clever names. most of them use the very euphemistic term, honey bucket, but this one port-a-potty is maintained by the Wizard of Ooze.

...lovely...

sticker shock

2008-07-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

yesterday, a new tax on gasoline came into effect in British Columbia. called a carbon tax, it is supposed to add a mere 2.3 cents to the price of gas. how did gas stations react? by increasing prices by as much as 10 cents in places. and this is a per liter price. with gas prices now at CAD$1.52/liter, that comes out to rough US$5.86/gallon.

...jaw hits floor...

...pause...

so yes, I am going to continue buying gas at Costco in Bellingham once a week. there's a more than $10 difference when filling the Prius up. that's $500 over the course of a year. yow.

miniature heat wave, part 2

2008-06-30T16:51:00.001-07:00

on Saturday, the heat continued to climb. I got up early to take advantage of the cooler part of the day, but the sun was already too bright to allow me to take any pictures. I did and do a little food shopping, though, in Vancouver.

in addition to visiting Fujiya, our Japanese supermarket, for a few items for Hiro's lunches, I also went to Bosa's for the first time, to check out the Italian selection.

wow. aisles filled with pasta, olive oil, antipasti, fresh cheeses... it was heavenly. of course, there was only a small space in the budget for shopping here, but I was happy to make do with some amaretti cookies and some tapenade.

by the time I got home, it was stiflingly hot inside the house, and Hiro's computer started crashing from the heat. we needed to get out, and fast.

luckily, all the pieces fell together for a great picnic.

our friend Will marinated a huge amount of beef and pork in a very delicious sauce of his own creation (and he won't share the recipe!).

we packed up our little grill and filled the cooler with ice, beer, pop and watermelon.

and our friends Larry and Art brought both a caesar salad and some potato salad.

Hiro and I volunteered to pick everyone up in Virginia (the Prius) and we drove to Spanish Banks, a beautiful beach that looks north at downtown Vancouver and the mountains beyond.

it was, of course, way too late in the day to find any open picnic tables, but I didn't care. we sat down in the shade of a tree, and proceeded to grill right on the ground. the park does not allow open containers of alcohol, so we were very discreet (unlike most of our neighbors, who had their beer poured out by park rangers and members of the VPD) in that respect, but the smell of the cooking meat was heavenly.

once again, I was on grill duty, and I made short work of the big slabs of beef and pork. the salads were really good. nobody can touch David Olson when it comes to caesar salad, but I really loved the offerings on Saturday.

before we knew it, it was 8pm, and we decided to pack up. before I dropped everyone off, we decided to stop off for gelato at La Casa. choosing a flavor is torture there, because there are so many. 218! Hiro and I sampled the basil, balsamic vinegar (both yucks), and the death by mango flavors. I eventually chose pink grapefruit champagne sorbetto. our friend Will had the jackfruit gelato, because it reminded him of the Philippines. and I honestly forget what Larry and Art had, although both of them gave me a taste!

why blog?

2008-06-30T13:56:00.001-07:00

I've been criticized of late about the degree of private revelation that occurred in my blog. since I hurt someone as a result, I removed the material in question.

as I tend to do whenever someone is critical of me, I spend a lot of time thinking about the reason for the criticism.

it has to do with my compulsive blogging.

why do I blog? why expose myself (and others) in such a public format? is this a literary exhibitionism? an online tell-all?

I don't think so, although others might disagree.

first off, a blog like this one is both public and private. yes, it is true that anyone could conceivably find it through google, and I do share the address with people I know, but it is not a destination for many people... I'm not getting traffic, and that's fine. I'm not really writing for an audience.

if that's the case, why not write in a journal?

I suppose part of the answer to that would be convenience. I sit at a computer all day, nearly every day, for the work I do, and it's easy to write at the keyboard. much easier, in fact, than handwriting anything anymore. and there is, in fact, a value to blogging.

the few people who read my blog regularly are all good friends of mine. they read and offer feedback. sometimes in the form of a comment, but more usually in email and phone calls. that feedback is important to me. I'm having a conversation with people whose opinions are important to me.

so I won't stop blogging. I will, however, respect confidentiality and privacy as asked.

miniature heat wave, part 1

2008-06-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

last Friday saw the start of a three-day heat wave, with temperatures, especially here on the heights of south Burnaby, stretching into the 90s. thankfully, the humidity levels are low, but still, the heat required some strategy...

Friday evening we sought out air conditioning. we have an a/c at home, but it's a portable model, that we wheel from room to room, and so far, it's only been in use in Hiro's office, because his computer is especially prone to crashes when it gets hot, and in the bedroom, where both Hime and I like it be cool.

so we went out for a fuller a/c experience. we met up with our friend David, and drove into Chinatown for some dinner. Jade Dynasty is one of our favorite restaurants. Kudos to David for trying everything, including the various mushrooms I ordered. I think one of them has or had the unfortunate name in English of Jew's Ear.

during dinner, David let me talk about things that were bothering me that day, and he offered his opinions. Hiro and I had talked about the issue in question a lot already, and I wanted another, outside, perspective. as usual, David's intelligence came shining through, and he had some provocative and interesting suggestions.

we had decided to see Pixar's newest movie, Wall-E, that night, and had already bought three tickets for the theatre nearest Chinatown. we had a little time to kill between dinner and the movie, so went walking. unfortunately, although the theatre is still within Chinatown, that neighborhood is adjacent to the East Hastings area, so any walk we went on was destined to bring us into contact with the addicts that hang out there. in some cases it was like being on the set of Night of the Living Dead. I think David's opinion, that fewer and fewer options for effective mental care in BC are helping to create this blight, was right on.

I do have to give a shout out, though, to the lovely ladies in attendance at Lick that night, standing outside on Abbott Street. no one is easier to talk to in Vancouver than a lovely drag queen, and there was a whole contingent on the sidewalk, dressed to the nines in spite of the heat. conversation is always so fun when tinged with the surreal.

the movie itself was bliss. Pixar continues to radically advance the art, not only of animation, but of movie-making as well. their use of focus is particularly compelling. and the attention to detail is amazing. I think we will have to see it again in a theatre just because we have undoubtedly missed a lot of details. the Peter Gabriel song at the end was beautiful as well. it was a perfectly beautiful film, from start to finish.

errata

2008-06-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

I recently posted some content that was very personal.

unintentionally, someone I care about was hurt by what I wrote.

I therefore removed the posts in question.

I could attempt to discuss my motivations or to justify what was written, but it would be pointless. someone is angry at me, and more words won't help.

budget meals

2008-06-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

there are a few things that I am grateful for, now that we are watching every penny.

one would have to be the few plants we're raising on the porch. having fresh herbs can make the defrosted fish into a suddenly delicious event, I'm guessing I won't use the lemon verbena again in that recipe (I'm always experimenting) but the pineapple mint worked wonders. as did the sage. and using the herbs in salad dressing...

which brings me to my second point. I have been appointed the salad dressing master in our house. Hiro gets to shop for, and make, the salads (and he's even learning what to do when the lettuce doesn't look worth a buy--last night we had a salad made from cucumbers, tomatoes and a mango! yum!), and then I get called on to make the dressing. we've saved all the old jam jars for making dressing in small amounts. and I mix things up. over the years, we've bought a wide variety of vinegars. red wine, orange champagne, white balsamic, apple cider, lingonberry (from Ikea!), plum vinegar from Japan, and my favorite, a Japanese citrus vinegar called ponzu. I usually use olive oil, but I've also found that grapeseed oil is a great alternative. a little bit of dijon honey mustard to emulsify everything, and salt and pepper, and then whatever else I decide to add. for the mago salad, for example, I wanted to keep it light to avoid overpowering the mango, so I put in a little honey and some fresh mint.

the other thing I'm happy for is the grill. it's a tiny little thing, but even the cheapest things taste better grilled. Trader Joe's has chicken drumsticks on sale. I marinated them in a spicy orange sauce I also got a Trader Joe's, maybe a year ago (you can tell, my pantry is packed and ready), although I know Hiro likes the marinade recipe I learned from my Grandma McManus years ago: equal parts of orange juice, soy sauce and honey, although I tend to cut back on the soy sauce....

I have also been named the grill master, so I take my book (right now I'm reading The Age of American Unreason), my drink (usually diet 7Up with a splash of grenadine) and sit out on the back porch in the light of the early evening and tend whatever we decided to throw on the grill. happiness comes with grill tongs. =)

Trader Joe's in Bellingham definitely makes it easier to eat well cheaply, and it's a shame they're not in Canada yet, but since even $4.27/gallon at the Bellingham Costco is a dollar less than anything in BC, I will definitely keep driving down once a week for my gas and groceries. and to stop at Haggen in Ferndale for Hiro's diet soda... =)

catching up

2008-06-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

this will probably seem a bit of a ramble. it's been a while since I could sit down and write without feeling guilty about not doing work. I can't even count the number of deadlines that happened this past week. that, of course, is the bugbear of freelance work. you can go for weeks twiddling your thumbs, and then, suddenly, everyone has work for you.

blogging thoughts have been percolating in my head for nearly a week. the cold and wet weather is a topic, but a boring one.

I could write about the IRS scariness but that makes me look really childish and somewhat irresponsible, so we'll leave off with that for a while. happy thoughts, happy thoughts...

...pause...

I finally found a wonderful and easy recipe for tomato sauce. Hiro's become something of a foodie, and when I first offered him a taste, he said it wasn't profound enough. okay. I get it. three ingredients. leave it on the stove on simmer. so between that first tasting, I turned the heat up a little, added a little more salt, and a splash of vinegar, a trick I learned from Jamie Oliver to balance out tomato acidity, and then when I poured the sauce over our Trader Joe's flax penne, some fresh mozzarella and some fresh herbs from our pot garden (plants grown in pots, not marijuana, mr federal agents), and sprinkled some pecorino on top, he was won over. and I love that sauce.

the girls beneath us were robbed. in broad daylight. I was home at the time, but I heard nothing. the thieves got away with their laptops, some jewelry and clothing. it sounds like the work of junkies, but who knows. there were no fingerprints.

we're going to Seattle on the weekend with friends to see Avenue Q at the Paramount. I've seen the show before but no one else in our group has. I'm particularly excited because the Stranger reported that perhaps as many as fifty people walked out on opening night. what kind of idiots go to a show without finding out what it's about? if profanity offends, then I say, stay in Bellevue!

and lastly, the IRS mess...

...pause...

...sigh...

back in 2004, as I was preparing my taxes, I got stuck on something and put everything aside. and I never got around to finishing it. and then 2005 came and I couldn't figure out how to do everything without completed returns from the prior year, and things just snowballed...

apparently, and I have to say that because I was too afraid to open the letters from the IRS, they not only want me to file, but they also want to audit my taxes for 2006, which is when we sold the condo and moved (and bought the deductible Prius as well). I know this because I've been preparing all my receipts and records because my lawyer is now involved. and because the IRS hit one of my clients with a garner order. i.e., they asked that client to pay anything they owed me to them instead. leave it to the IRS to know how to get someone's attention...

...sigh...

and there is one more kink as a result. my lawyer told us not to file our landed applications until this is done, because my tax evasion might show up on the FBI records check they do. that's just as well, because I have a feeling the legal bills will be monstrous...

a kick in the rubber parts

2008-06-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

in which I show that anything, including blogging, is better than working on a Sunday morning...

the title, of course, is from Torch Song Trilogy, and is uttered by Harvey's character, Virginia Hamm, as she prepares to go on stage. I really love that sentiment because it encapsulates Virginia's take on the universe: that shit happens but I'll be damned if I can't find a way to make it funny somehow.

I've been a complete idiot this week. part of it may be medicinal, but I've been unable to get as much work done as I should have, and now I'm stuck on a Sunday morning, when I'd much rather be in bed, curled up next to Hiro and finishing The Amber Spyglass (the His Dark Materials trilogy by Pullman is a fantastic read).

so after doing some other things this morning, I decided I needed some coffee. right now, I have four kinds of beans in the house. two are from Hawai'i: Kaua'i peaberry and Kona, from Trader Joe's. one is a Swedish roast from Ikea. and the last is the new Pike Place Roast from Starbucks. I splurged a little and ground up some peaberry.

I set up the coffee maker and then went to make some toast. I took out the butter and jam and then found my coffee cup, pouring in the milk and syrup (crème caramel flavor today). the coffee maker chirped to tell me it was done, but when I turned to look at it, it was running reruns of the Exorcist.

a gruesome mix of coffee and grounds was pouring out from the base of the maker onto the counter and down on the floor. mere paper towels weren't going to stop this. I pushed one of the kitchen floor mats into that corner to sop up the mess, and then proceeded to start wiping up the grounds, which were now everywhere.

I have no idea how that happened. a forensic review of the maker seems to indicate that somehow grounds got splashed up into water path, and then down towards the carafe, where, I presume, they plugged its entry and then allowed the coffee and grounds to start spilling over.

once everything was cleaned, I started over again, and that time, it was uneventful, but, yikes.

and I know, on a cosmic scale, this was the most minor of hassles. a very light kick. reminiscent of Woody Allen's early stand-up when he would talk about how his appliances hate him, including the tape recorder that, as he talked into, would say, I know... I know...

so I smile, or grimace, and get back to work.

anti-depressants

2008-06-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

like probably half the people in the Northwest, I suffer from depression, either brought on by or, more likely, exacerbated by lower levels of sunshine.

in what is turning out to be habitual, it seems that I get things under control with meds, and then we have a bit of sunny weather, and something in my brain switches off, and I start forgetting to take my meds every day.

and then we have, like this past week, a long grey stretch of weather, and, no matter how quickly I try to get regular with the meds again, I find myself floundering for a bit.

no motivation.

there's lots of work to do, and of course I don't want to do any of it.

...chuckle...

another wedding

2008-06-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

congrats, felicitations and all happiness to my baby brother Peter and his lovely fiancée, Megan. they are engaged and have set the date for the 27th of December.

this means that Hiro and I will be back with my folks and my siblings at Christmas.

now I know that Hiro is already grumbling about winter on the East Coast, but I am really excited about seeing my family again. I just wish I had time to drive up to Maine as well to see my father's sister Ann and her family too.

some things I am already thinking about.

if at all possible, we will fly non-stop. I am so over transfers. we're going to fly SEA-BOS, so either Alaska or Jet Blue should be able to help us.

there are friends in NYC and in the Boston area I want to see too, but Hiro's work schedule may be problematic. of course, I could fly out earlier, but...

anyway, we'll see how the planning goes. as Hiro says, we need to finish our landed immigrant stuff first before we buy tickets.

gardening moments

2008-05-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

so, it's probably not real gardening if it's all in containers on the veranda/porch/balcony/deck. but it feels like gardening when you're washing potting soil of your hands.

as of today, we have a container with a huge tomato plant in it, a container with basil, and a container with oregano, rosemary and thyme all mixed in. I think we're in for some Italian food this summer!

and I spent the morning putting together two hanging baskets. the smaller one has just six strawberry plants in it, but the larger one is a very eclectic mix: strawberries, wishbone flowers (Torenia spp.), peppermint, sage, chives and Italian parsley.

what's left to do? I'm growing a variety of morning glories (Ipomea spp.) from seed and tomorrow, Hiro and I are heading to a Japanese bazaar and the local Japanese heritage center. the word on the street is that they will be selling young plants, as well, and it'd be great to raise some Japanese eggplant, cucumber, pumpkin and shiso as well.

Canadian redneck

2008-05-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

I did my weekly run down to Bellingham's Costco to get gas ('cause even $3.91/gallon is cheaper than Canadian prices), and on the way home, once I crossed the border, I noticed a pickup truck ahead of me on 99.

on the cab window was a bumper sticker. it was Larry the Cable Guy's catchphrase, 'git 'r done'. (out of curiosity, what is the 'r an abbreviation or apostrophe of? her?)

in spite of his reputed homophobic jokes, I've seen Larry in concert (thank you, Patrick!) and think he's pretty funny, usually. kinda cute, too. especially to Hiro (which explained why we had to see Delta Farce... ugh...).

as I passed the pickup, I wondered what a Canadian redneck might look like.

sure enough...

he was picking his nose!

thanks!

it seems some things know no boundaries!

mandibles of death

2008-05-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

something I hadn't thought possible happened today.

Hime, our cat, caught and killed a small bird (most likely a chickadee) today. one minute, he was sitting outside the veranda door, asking to be let in, the next, he jumped up onto the veranda railing and came back down, bird in mouth.

why hadn't I thought this possible?

well, Hime was neutered at a very early age, and as a result, he's never been the most aggressive cat. when we had mice in New West, for example, Hiro and I had to teach him to hunt them.

and although he's always been fascinated by the birds, I suppose I figured they'd be too fast for him.

we had belled him as well, but one night, last month, Hime came home from some kind of scrape without his collar, which included his name tag and amulet and bell. we've since replaced the collar, but haven't yet replaced anything else.

we won't keep him in, but I'll be more conscientious about letting him back in when he wants in. I'm not going to remove the feeders, either, because we've seen beautiful birds like Steller's Jays and a species of woodpecker.

but I better get that bell again fast...

sold

2008-05-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

my baby finally has a new owner.

I will miss her. I had her for six years and we drove everywhere together. without her, I wouldn't have done as many shows as I did, and even though she passed the 200,000 mile mark, her heart was still strong and true.

she was a good car.

salt wars

2008-05-26T22:51:00.001-07:00

of all the things to argue about...

I admit, I have a thing for salt. I think we have seven different varieties in the house.

my recent favorite is a grey, hand-collected sea salt from Normandy, sold at, where else? Trader Joe's. it's flaky and has a big flavor. when we grill, I sprinkle a little on the meat.

but Hiro insists I'm doing it wrong. he thinks the salt should have a smaller grain when applied directly to food, so that the seasoning is even. he prefers another (cheaper) sea salt from Trader Joe's.

I suppose that after the millions of years we've been together as a couple, I stop arguing about these things... neither will be converted to the other's opinion. so I have to sneak my salt with me to the grill...

I am the grillmaster!

I can get away with that!

hibachi

2008-05-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

when I was a kid, a hibachi was a portable grill. usually for charcoal. akin to a camp stove, I suppose, but a grill.

of course, having been to Japan, I know that a hibachi is actually used, there at least, as a heater... but...

Hiro and I have been sans grill since we moved north, but we ended that this past week with the purchase of a propane hibachi. a tiny grill, but it works. cooks food fast, and wonderfully!

our first attempt was chicken thighs. I marinated them in a mixture of ponzu (a Japanese mixture of citrus juices and vinegar), ginger, honey and soy sauce.

delicious!

last night, Hiro cooked corn on the grill. still in the husk. wonderful!

I think we're going to become grill addicts this summer...

onion oddness

2008-05-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

the strangest thing happened.

Hiro wanted me to make Korean beef for dinner last night. I had two ideas for side dishes. gyoza or an onion confit. he voted for the onion.

I had bought a bag of red onions at Trader Joe's earlier, and proceeded to trim and peel them. no problem. I took out a bowl and a mandolin and began slicing them.

our mandolin is sharp. I cut my thumb. not too deeply, I suppose, but deep enough. it hurt. I started running it under cold water, and that hurt too, so I yelled at the pain. Hiro came running in from his office.

one moment I was standing at the sink, Hiro looking for bandaids.

the next moment I was on the kitchen floor, coming to.

Hiro said that he had noticed that I had gone deathly pale and my eyes had lost focus. he came over to hold me when it seemed that my knees gave way and he helped me slide gently to the floor.

I have never fainted at the sight of my own blood before. I think that was only the second time I ever fainted. I don't know why it happened.

Hiro found some gauze and tape and fashioned a cap for my thumb once the bleeding stopped. it sill hurts, but I did lie down for several hours after that. Hiro brought me some orange juice, to bring my blood sugar level back up, and asked me how to finish making dinner.

the confit never came out the way I imagined. according the Hiro, there was a lot of water content in the onions, so they never really got that sweet consistency I was after, but when I tasted them later, they were still very good.

the new idiots

2008-05-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

when I went to get my car rental last Saturday, the place was packed, as is usual, with the usual assortment of Microsoftees. the best and the brightest, blah-blah-blah. to a person, they seemed to be recent immigrants.

and, to a person, they demanded the use of GPS.

now, this is a budget operation. they offer GPS equipment to rent, but no vehicles include it. and since this was near their closing time on Saturday, they had no GPS devices left.

several people actually declined to rent a car if they couldn't have GPS.

my goodness, people, if you're smart enough to work at MS, surely you're smart enough to read a map!

ease?

2008-05-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

this past weekend, it being a holiday weekend in Canada (Victoria Day! we love queens!), Hiro and I scheduled the 30,000 mile service for our beloved Prius, Virginia (because she sounds like a Virginia) for the holiday Monday down in non-holiday Seattle and decided to take advantage of friendly hospitality and stay for the whole weekend with various friends.

as this was a major service, our dealer asked me to drop off Virginia on Sunday night. that would require us to rent a car, and since I'd been dealing with a certain rental company in Blah-vue for years and years, I decided to go to them. less than $70 for two days. and I was upgraded from the economy model to a V8 truck for free. in retrospect, that may not have been wise, given how eagerly the Dodge Dakota sucks down gas, but...

essentially, with a rental also available to us from Saturday to Monday, Hiro and I were able to split up. I took the truck and went photographing. Hiro went shopping. to hear him tell, it was more of a religious experience. or semi-sexual. he gets orgasmic just reading the circular from Fry's. and he is happy to spend hours at Value Village.

since I am equally happy to spend hours at nurseries and parks, which would drive him crazy, it was a win-win situation.

on Monday, as we were reunited with Virginia and driving northward once more with our purchases all stowed, we talked about what we noticed while driving around on our own.

the effort to expand 405 is going faster than expected

I actually experienced some mild synchronicity, driving on 405 at 4:05

there is a new Cabela's store open in Lacey and Hiro must be taken there the next time we go to Seattle

the construction to widen I-5 in Vancouver, WA, is now complete, so the effort is now occurring between Olympia and Chehalis

gas prices have soared above the $4 mark for a lot of places. thank god for Costco

Hiro also remarked that, since he did so much driving and he normally doesn't up here in BC, that he hasn't yet found there to be the same level of yuttari in BC that there is in the Seattle area.

yuttari is a hard-to-translate Japanese concept. it is glossed in jdic as:

ゆったり (adv,vs) (1) comfortable; easy; calm; (2) loose; spacious

Ex:
この世の心配事は忘れて気をゆったり持て。 Forget the anxieties of life and learn to relax. (Sense 1)

Ex:
男性用の衣類はゆったりしている。 Male clothes are loose fitting. (Sense 2)

I'm guessing that he was, as a driver, thinking of the ease with which he gets around. wider streets. a more relaxed environment. that incorporates both senses of the definition, I guess. the ease of calm and the ease of spaciousness.

I never thought of things in that way, perhaps because I am, essentially, a New York driver, but Hiro learned how to drive a car in the Seattle area. after eight years of living there, even he, with his incredible lack of a sense of direction, knows his way around, whereas the roads and neighborhoods up here in BC still challenge him.

it was an interesting consideration. I've been thinking about that ever since.

party talk

2008-05-17T00:03:00.001-07:00

Hiro and I and our friend Dennis went to a party in Burien (gasp!) tonight. it was a birthday blast for our friend Mike. killer cocktails, food, friends and a blackjack table! whee!

best line heard: if I had to live with me, I'd end up killing me.

adverbs!

2008-05-16T14:01:00.001-07:00

seen on the back of a truck today: this vehicle makes ridiculously wide turns.

my mind, caffeinated

2008-05-16T08:09:00.001-07:00

yet another strange thought occurred to me today. it must be the coffee that makes me all twirly headed but... the Japanese can't pronounce the letter V. or an L. so a Volvo becomes a Borbo. sounds like the name of a Hobbit.

one 'mo victory

2008-05-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

marriage in California is no longer the preserve of hets!

as much as I love straight people (after all we 'mos wouldn't be here without y'all), I am heartened to see another advance on the road to real equality down in Jesusland.

it'll be interesting to see the reaction from both the Governator and his lovely missus...

more thoughts on 'baby on board'

2008-05-15T11:05:00.001-07:00

I was discussing this with Hiro last night and he mentioned that such signs might have another function.

they are declaratory.

like rainbow stickers, or 'W 2004' stickers, they identify the occupants.

they say: we are straight! and we reproduced! so there!

it's arguable that the declaration is valid, since more and more gay couples have kids, but I saw his point...

baby on board

2008-05-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

I had a sort of strange epiphany the other day. a car in front of me was being driven by someone who decided to hand-craft, rather crudely, their own 'baby on board' sign.

and then I thought, what good do these signs do?

do sane people normally drive as if they would endanger the life of a baby?

of course not.

and would a reckless driver suddenly awake to the error of his or her ways upon the realization that they were about to strike an infant-bearing vehicle?

I doubt it. highly.

this is not to say that I am desirous of an accident that would involve someone's precious child. no one would be. yet I really can't understand what, if any, function such signs fulfill.

sloth

2008-05-05T12:56:00.001-07:00

(as in the deadly sin, not the mammal)

tourist attractions, I believe, are oriented toward those with the commitment and energy that early mornings require. as the day in question immediately followed the late night our downstairs neighbors had, neither Hiro nor I nor even our guest was very energetic that morning, and, in fact, we were only able to sufficiently rouse ourselves and get out at sometime after 11.

our tentative plans included a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium, but, to begin with, we needed brunch. Hiro and I thought to take our friend and guest to Garden City Hot Pot in Richmond, home of some of the best dim sum in BC. unlike the stereotypical dim sum experience, there are no steam carts pushing the wares about at Garden City. it is a class establishment. you order after reviewing the menu, which changes seasonally, it seems, and your dishes are brought to the table immediately after being freshly prepared.

another benefit to Garden City is the selection of teas. diners can choose from among nearly twenty varieties and can, as I do, combine varieties in a single order. your tea leaves are brought to the table, and the uninitiated undergo a trial by hot water...

at your place setting is a tea cup, and a lidded tea bowl that sits on its own dish. there is also a larger square bowl for the entire table's use. you begin by swirling a small amount of hot water in the tea bowl to warm it, pouring out the hot water into the square bowl when this is done. you then add the amount of tea leaves for the strength of tea you desire into the tea bowl, and pour hot water (a kettle is at the table, which includes a built-in conduction heating element that only heats metal objects placed atop it) over the leaves. the lid is replaced to allow the tea to steep, and then the fun begins.

to get the brewed tea from the bowl to the cup, you must take the bowl in hand and adjust the lid such that a stream of tea can be poured without allowing the tea leaves to enter the cup as well. this is, in a word, difficult. although event the experienced usually end up with sodden luncheon mats and napkins, it can be particularly traumatic for the overly cautious. the key, as Hiro reminds us frequently, is to be bold. to pour without fear.

I had a mixture of dragon's well and one other green tea whose name in Chinese is literally translated to 'white peony'. it was a strong brew, and a snuck some of Hiro's chrysanthemum flowers (for that was the tea he drank) into my tea bowl as well to mellow it.

the food was, as always, delightful, from the old favorites to new treats, like sesame sticky rice cakes with flaked coconut and pignola filling.

and yet, it seems, we had lingered too long.

for upon return to downtown Vancouver at 3:30 that afternoon, we realized, while stopped at our drugstore for our guest, that the Vancouver Aquarium, to which we had planning to go, would close at 5.

not nearly enough time.

a hasty conference considered our options and we decided to head for Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver, the park surrounding the lighthouse at Point Atkinson. none of us had ever been.

we drove the route along the water from the Lions' Gate Bridge, and arrived at the park in good time only to find that the parking lot was yet a hike's distance from the lighthouse. Were we up for it? It was less than a kilometer to the lighthouse, but of course, it was mainly downhill, which, we realized, portended a more arduous trek back to the car.

still, it is a beautiful hike. very Pacific Northwest. cedars, hemlocks, redwoods. and the vista from above the lighthouse is beautiful as well, as you look out onto the Georgia Strait, across to Vancouver Island, and back at the city as well.

we were, naturally, perhaps, hungry by the time we returned to the car and decided to go for ramen at, of course, Hiro's favorite ramen restaurant in the city: Kintaro. ramen, for the uninitiated, is essentially Chinese-style egg noodles in a Japanese style broth, served with varying accoutrements atop the bowl, including corn, butter, hard-boiled eggs, nori (dried seaweed) and/or wakame (sliced seaweed) and tender slices of Japanese hog belly bacon. the possible combinations are increased when you vary the broth types as well.

true to type, they also serve gyoza, pan-fried dumplings, as well, and nothing goes better with ramen and gyoza than an ice-cold beer. of course, I could only get through half of my meal, but when you're out with Hiro, there's never any worries on that front!

after dinner, we drove up Davie to give our guest a tour of the bars. although we went to Numbers after stopping in at the Pumpjack, Numbers was dead. so we trekked back up to PJ's and had another round there. it was nice because it was getting more crowded as the night wore on, and we saw some more friends out as well.

and that was how we spent a very lazy Saturday!

dreaming out loud

2008-05-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

several times in the past few weeks, I have found myself having dreams where I was shouting at people. and, in the dreams, I recall having a scratchy throat, such that my voice was breaking, and I was struggling to make myself heard.

I would repeat myself in the dream, trying to gain more strength in my voice.

and then Hiro would find a way to wake me, telling me I was dreaming, and had been shouting in my sleep.

he told me that generally the words I was yelling were indeed unintelligible but that everyone now and then he could make out a name, including all three versions of his (his given name, Hiromichi, his general nickname, Hiro, and his childhood nickname, Chi).

and then came Friday night. we had a guest staying with us, but one of the girls downstairs had had a birthday and a party was on full force. our guest and I fell asleep at around 12:30AM, but the noise kept Hiro awake. and he woke me, to tell me to start texting the girls, asking them to tone it down. they did turn down the music, but it took a long time for the loud boys who had come over to leave.

the time seemed even longer, because Hiro kept grumbling about calling the cops while I kept trying to fall back asleep, in vain...

finally I started to dream. I saw myself going downstairs and confronting the girls, getting angrier in part because the party kept going, but also because Hiro couldn't ignore the noise as well as I could (which is an odd reversal--usually he has no problem sleeping and I'm the one disturbed by every little sound). and I began to yell.

apparently Hiro heard me. and he began to try and wake me. for once, I was apparently too far gone to respond to a gentle shaking. he told me the next morning that he began pinching me harder and harder, which also failed to arouse me. and then, he gave my stomach a loud slap, which, he said, woke me at last.

funny thing is, I don't remember any of that. I remember waking from the dream, but not being assaulted. which is just as well, I suppose...

some warmth would be nice

2008-05-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

as I listened to the traffic radio station yesterday (AM730, all traffic, all the time!) the meteorologist mentioned that April had been one of the coldest we'd seen for about 30 years (and yes, I know, how can a station be 'all traffic' if they break for the weather?).

this month has had a chilly start too. the only benefit to this has been the prolongating blossoms. everything has had a longer flowering season so far, which is good when you want to photograph it. for example, flowering quince.

there's not much of it up here. there was a great stand of bright red flowering quince in Seattle, though, in Volunteer Park, atop Capitol Hill. and yet, when I was there last, they had cut it all down! barbarism!

thankfully, the Arboretum still has bushes of beautiful pale orange flowering quince (which yielded the shot above), and I did find some flowering quince at the Van Dusen as well last weekend when Hiro and I went.

back in the saddle

2008-05-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

so I usually work as a translator. it's quiet work, occasionally frustrating as I attempt to parse some nasty phraseology or other, but it seems I can go for hours without talking to anyone except my cat.

but every now and then there's an interpreting gig. I dust off my jacket so I can play dress-up, and spend days with clients, going back and forth in English and Japanese. it always amazes people to watch me do that. I'm such an obvious caucasian, as it were, that when fluent Japanese comes out of my mouth, people have been know to do a double-take. love that.

and of course, the wonderful thing about freelance work like this is sometimes you learn something about which you knew nothing. this time it was concrete. Hiro gave me a basic tutorial on the basics while I looked up the Japanese equivalents for things like 'ponding' and 'fly ash' and 'silica fume'... and once on site with the client, I watched as they stirred up a few batches of concrete additives as well, which was also fascinating.

and now, as Hiro rightly noted, it's time to up my rates, since the agency that pays me is most likely getting a bargain... =)

bakeries

2008-04-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

I really miss Japanese bakeries. perhaps for different reasons than Hiro, who misses them also, but is a fond of the big soft squared-off loaves of very white bread they make.

I miss the rolls they make. admittedly, not all. melon rolls, made with melon juice and dotted with chocolate chip simulacra of seeds were never a favorite.

but weiner rolls, with a hot dog sausage rolled within the softest white roll, or cheese rolls, with little chunks of cheese awaiting you within a hard-crusted exterior, or potato and tuna rolls, which contain half a boiled potato atop a bed of tuna fish salad...

there were sweet rolls as well, including a roll of sponge cake which encircled whipped cream and an entire banana.

and the Japanese seemed to be inordinately fond of carbohydrate sandwiches. you would see long hot dog rolls filled with yakisoba noodles, which I never liked, or potato croquette sandwiches or, my personal favorite, potato salad sandwiches.

of course, the ordinary sandwiches were never completely ordinary either. no one had grasped what Allen Sherman had once sung as 'customers should see salami, Coming through the Rye". of course, there was no rye bread or pumpernickel for that matter, but rarely was ham, the cold cut of choice, ever piled high on a sandwich. for volume, you had to go with the pork cutlet, or tonkatsu, sandwich.

these were admittedly best when sold at pork cutlet restaurants, where the meat was likely to be the thickest and tastiest, but the combination of juicy pork, the crisp breading, the shredded cabbage and the thick bulldog sauce (which is like a worcestershire sauce made with fruit and vegetable pastes (and no bulldogs) for a much thicker consistency) is wonderful.

upon my return to the US, bakeries became a disappointing affair. I remember one place from childhood, an Italian bakery, that had wonderful napoleons, but I've never had one the equal anywhere on the west coast. and we had a real jewish bakery in my old home town, and the bread, rolls and bagels there were divine.

a Taiwanese bakery/cafe finally opened in Redmond, a few years before we moved away, and they came the closest to the Japanese experience. good weiner rolls. rolls dotted with ham chunks and green onion. and wonderful cakes too. Regent Bakery. they're still good, and they serve wonderful lunches too, including a fantastic dish of thick noodles cooked with a sauce of scrambled egg and shrimp.

but I digress...

once we moved to British Columbia, one of the few shopping experiences I've been glad of is the continued prevalence of small greengrocers (where it is much easier to find locally grown and fresh seasonal items--I'm one of those people who likes to eat strawberries in May, asparagus in April, corn in August, etc.) and of small bakeries.

there is a guy in New West who runs a small bakery on Sixth, and he makes a wonderful challah. probably a sweeter dough than normal, but there is nothing better than that bread for toast. he also makes excellent olive loaves, and walnut and apricot loaves, which Hiro likes, but the best fruit and nut breads are probably made at a little French bakery on Granville Island called La Baguette et L'Echalotte. their loaves with pecans and figs are wonderful.

there is also a chain of Hong Kong-style bakeries here, called Maxim's, which does excellent cakes and the best weiner rolls I've ever had. they leave them open-face in structure and then pile on cheese, which melts all over. so good. they also make a tuna pastry, which is a disk of coiled croissant dough (flaky and buttery), over which a tin layer of tuna salad is spread, and then glazed with what tastes like a standard apricot glaze. I think I am the only one of my friends who likes that pastry, but so be it... I also like peanut butter and cheddar sandwiches, so there's no accounting for taste.

a warning

2008-04-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

after having finished my program in graphic design, BCIT has been planning a night for students in all four of its programs (Design Essentials, Web Design, Animation and Print Technologies) to display their work.

work will prevent me from attending, but I've followed all the discussion that has been going on online.

one thing has become crystal clear as a result.

I must warn anyone hiring for web design work to NOT HIRE anyone named Gale Franey. she is a manipulative, self-centered and destructive individual, incapable of any teamwork. she will sour any environment in which she finds herself. avoid her like the plague.

dream trip...

2008-04-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

(of course, I tend to do this when I'm flat broke but) I've been thinking about taking a long holiday, most likely in at least a year from now. there are other places I can and should visit before this, like San Francisco (to see friends and photograph flowers), New England (to see family) and St Petersburg (to see my brother and the Hermitage), but this daydream vacation would also be a wonderful chance to photograph beautiful flowers and see a lot of (old and new and Facebook) friends.

first stop would be Japan. besides seeing old friends, of course, in Tokyo, I'd want to visit Kyoto and Uji. I've never been to the Byodo'in and the restoration work should be fabulous (in part because I translated some of the descriptions of what they did).

next stop? Taipei. Will and Wilson, of course, would be our guides to the fabulous gay side of Taipei, and I know there are wonderful gardens. the National Museum also has some wonderful calligraphy I want to ogle.

then a stop in Hong Kong. Stephen and Arthur await us there, and more flowers do as well.

and then Singapore. I've never been. Hiro has and he says it's very very humid and so I'll hate it, but I know there are wonderful orchid collections there, and my new Facebook friend, Brian, has promised to show us they gay bars there too. Hiro's not been to those...

and then the train to Kuala Lumpur. again, more flowers, as well as three or four new Facebook friends.

from there? I think we'll need a chance to relax (and photograph more flowers, of course) in Hawai'i before we head home. maybe the Big Island this time... so Hiro can go see the volcanoes.

I think we'll need at least a month to do all this, no?

archetypes

2008-04-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

this thought popped into my head this morning...

a good friend of ours, Jordan, who is a sweet, sweet guy, recently moved in with two other good friends of ours, David and Barry.

David and Barry are an interesting couple. Barry is an Anglican priest and is very devout. he's also a nice guy, very patient and kind. in short, perfect priest material.

David is the yang to that yin, however. Raucous, rebellious, outrageous and a libertine to boot. it's wonderful yet strange to see how well he and Barry get along, although at times we will hear Barry gently chiding David.

anyway, the thought that popped into my head was an image of a Jordan in an old cartoon, in which an angel appears on one shoulder and then a devil on the other...

which is not to say David is a devil... devilish, perhaps... but not satanic. =)

les six

2008-04-24T17:47:00.000-07:00

yes, I suppose I'm comparing us to French composers (only if I can be Satie--oh wait, he wasn't one of them--Milhaud, then)...

but there are six of us...

from the left...

our friend, Hiro (Cub is his nickname), me (in the back, natch), my Hiro, Daniel, Bill and Dave (both of whom are new friends in the SF Bay area)

the perfect wine!

2008-04-23T12:50:00.001-07:00

now, I admit, we've yet to taste this vintage, but you have to give the Ozzies full points for naming...

yummified corn goodness

2008-04-23T12:44:00.001-07:00

last night, I finally had the chance to try a recipe from one of my favorite bloggers, Shark-fu, the AngryBlackBitch. it is delicious! here's her recipe.

even Hiro loved it, which is high praise, Shark-fu!

and I did the recipe with a box of Trader Joe's corn bread mix, which worked just as well as the Jiffy mix, I would think.

5 Point

2008-04-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

last Saturday night, Hiro and I were in Seattle with some friends. we had gone out for a drink and were heading back to our friends' hotel, the Best Western Executive over by the Space Needle. all five of us were a little hungry, and someone mentioned the 5 Point, a cafe near the hotel, as a possible destination.

we trooped over there, and there were some people sitting outside, smoking and talking, but as the first of us entered, one of the sitting people jumped up, and ran into the bar yelling at our friend and then grabbed him to drag him back outside.

he was saying that he had asked for ID and Dave (our friend) hadn't shown any, so he wasn't going to let us into the bar.

first off, how were any of us supposed to know he was some sort of doorman? and no, he didn't ask for ID first. it was obvious we were heading to the cafe, but the so-called doorman was so busy talking the women who were smoking that he didn't notice us? and then to get verbally and physically abusive?

I want to report that asshole. besides the BBB, can anyone suggest a good place to take this story?

also recently heard from Seattle

2008-04-19T15:15:00.001-07:00

the names of three novitiates at the Abbey of Saint Joan, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence:

Sister Dawna Creation

Sister Isabelle Aringing

and...

Sister Nova Jaina

bless the Lusty Lady

2008-04-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

there's a strip joint in downtown Seattle, the Lusty Lady, owned and operated by the ladies who work there, on 1st Avenue, across from the Art Museum, and the always have the best show titles, punning on whatever is currently in the news or going on...

word is that this weekend's show is entitled:

The Forbidden Schwingdom!

freaky weather

2008-04-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

the strange spring we've been having still continues...

yesterday it hailed three times and snowed as well. no accumulations, but we saw plenty of cars driving into town with snow piled on them, coming in from the foothills and mountains, no doubt...

the shrine got hit with a big snow yesterday too. they say summer doesn't begin out here until Canada Day (or July Fourth), but this year, who knows...

oh, brother!

2008-04-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

my brother, Kevin, celebrated his 40th birthday this week. (he's at the far right in the photo. from left, that's Hiro, me, my younger brother Carl, and Kevin. a handsome crew.) unfortunately, I'll always be older than he, but I did call him first thing in the morning to sing out:
happy birthday to you
you live in a zoo
you smell like a monkey
and you act like one too

since there's only two years between us, and since we were gifted as children in different ways (I was the pseudo-intellect, he, the pseudo-athlete), we usually fought each other as loving brothers do (especially, if you believe that astrology stuff, when one of us is an Aries (Kevin) and the other a Capricorn (me). a goat and a ram...). breaking things in the house. running. screaming. wearing out our mother's last nerve.

we grew up and took very different paths. we faced different health issues, too, and different dependencies (mine are shopping and noshing, for the record). but over the past few years especially, we realized we still love each other, which has been a great gift. I hope I always get to wish him a happy birthday.

free at last

2008-04-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

(nothing like a little homo hyperbole!)

when we lived in the US, Hiro came over on a student visa. and when we decided to move north, we also decided it would be okay for him to stop going to classes (and save us some tuition money) and commute, as it were, every three months or so, from Japan (because tourist visas for Japanese visitors to the US can last as long as 3 months).

so in December of 2005, Hiro went into the registrar at City University and said his parents had asked him to come home. Hiro would have 30 days to leave the US. the school was supposed to then send in paperwork to immigration. except they never did. so...

every time that Hiro entered the US for the past two+ years, officials would see his passport bring up a red flag every time they swiped it. had he overstayed his student visa? when did he stop going to school?

they never blocked his entry, but we did get run through the wringer several times in terms of questioning.

finally, in February of this past year, one senior officer at Peace Arch, who had seen and remembered Hiro from another such session, told us he was going to send in the right paperwork to HSA to get this fixed.

we had been promised this before, so initially we took it with a grain of salt.

and then, when we drove down to the shrine two weeks ago, we were essentially waved through. no questions beyond the ordinary. nothing about student visas.

had that official finally done it? or was it just a fluke?

and then we had to drive down to Bellingham last weekend. with breath held, we approached the booth at Peace Arch and...

once again, we were waved through!

hurray! we longer have to dread crossing the border together!

mystery cat

2008-04-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

our cat, Hime, now embodies a mystery.

he came home the other night without his collar, which would have been strange enough, but also with a serious injury to one of his rear legs. the hair and skin on a section of the shank has been removed cleanly. no blood. no apparent infections. but he is clearly in pain.

truth be told, we didn't notice this until he basically went for a day without getting out of his bed. he didn't bother to eat at all. Hiro and I went to look him over and noticed the injury. that made me very nervous, so we brought his food, water and litter box over to his bed so he wouldn't have to go far and let him rest.

I'm calling the vet in the morning.

learn something new every day...

2008-04-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

one of the benefits in my relationship with Hiro is that it has been a long time since either of us seriously thought about condoms.

yesterday, however, I was alerted to the fact that there are indeed awards for the best condoms being made these days.

who knew?

expensive mistake

2008-04-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

I'm translating a number of short stories right now for a collection that will appear in English of a Japanese author's works. the client specified one story to begin with, but I misunderstood the direction and did a different story. initially they said they would pay for that and use it anyway, but now they're going back on they're word. right when I need the money, too. slapped. down. hard. to the tune of $1K.

sip water...

primal scream...

Vaisakhi

2008-04-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

learned something new this past weekend, in the midst of dealing with post offices and banks. there's a Punjabi festival called Vaisakhi, originally a harvest festival and now, judging from the festival held in Surrey, just a few klicks away from us, is predominantly a Sikh festival.

someone came to Hiro's workplace earlier in the week to promote the festival, and Hiro was sold when the person said, free food. the tradition, apparently, is to celebrate harvest abundance by giving it away. nice.

it's a big thing in Surrey, although this was the first we had heard of it. the festival here is the largest held in North America, perhaps the largest outside of India. besides the booths with food and entertainment, the political speeches, there is also a parade.

fascinating, Captain, said Mr Spock. for indeed, it was.

to my delight, the parade is led by a contingent of the Sikh Motorcyle Club, or Sikhs on Bikes. any attendee of a gay pride parade will recall the similar pride of place given to the group, Dykes on Bykes. the Sikhs, however, bring an entirely different level of cool.

this was followed by a wide variety of floats. school groups. political groups. arts groups. I suppose we were near the end of the parade route, for many of the people riding on the floats were tired out. after all, the weather suddenly went from damp spring to hot summer in the space of six hours, and we were all in the 75 degrees of bright sunshine.

walking alongside or behind the floats were occasional groups of performers. great costumes, although we often found the footwear favored flashy comfort over tradition.

along the parade route, eating food, watching floats, and just generally enjoying the festival, were a great mass of people. we learned from a friend of ours that people wearing orange were doing so in support of Khalistan, the country that Sikh separatists wish to create in India. I suppose the officer in the last photo might not have been told...

on various stages, children were performing traditional dances in amazingly pastel outfits.

and there were other interesting sights to note...

the conservatives? really?

I guess so... this guy had a Stephen Harper button on...

and I don't know about you, but I want my next mortgage officer to be named Dimple.

and check out the smiles, especially on that guy at lower right!

and then there were the saris. so beautiful...

but then there were the men. our friend, Mony, who we ran into there, is not Punjabi. he's from northern India, with stops in Africa, Detroit, Kyoto and Toronto before settling in Vancouver, and he, like Hiro and I, a big 'mo. he said he found fifty percent of the men in the crowd exciting. that's a little high, but there were indeed some very handsome men about (including the Harper fan, above). and there fashion sense was also great. everything from traditional to mixed to modern...

the ever popular pimp look...

forget the Manolos, I need these shoes!

great do-rag! and handsome into the bargain!

another great look and looker!

I have finally found the perfect turban color! and I love how it matches the shirt!

this guy was one of the bikers, and he loved having his photo taken.

and what can I say... work it!

lastly, I should mention the food, because some of it was wonderful, and some was probably more wonderful if you can bear very spicy food well (hint, Tsugu, hint!). I don't remember what everything was called, apart from the (cold) water and (hot but delicious) chai. we tried two sweets. one was bright orange and was sort of a Punjabi version of funnel cakes... a sweet dough fried as it was poured in a thin stream into hot oil, and then soaked, soaked, soaked in sweet syrup. the other was the sweet syrup-soaked ball of a fried doughnut. lastly, I bravely tried (and finished) what could only be described as (volcanically spicy) Punjabi french toast. bread was dipped into a spiced batter and then fried, and served with a hot sauce. if I thought I had been sweating before...

needless to say we had a great time, and we will definitely go back again next year. mark your calendars! it's the second Saturday in April.

the sequel to bonjour croissant

2008-04-13T15:37:00.001-07:00

it would have had to have been the 1980s, during the yuppie idiocy of the Reagan reign, when an infestation of 'fast' French eateries sprung up on the East Coast of the US (which is where I was living at the time). Bonjour Croissant was one such eatery.

in response, Fran Lebowitz (she who, when asked during an interview what her favorite animal was, replied, steak) opined how the French might feel if we went to Paris and opened a chain of stores called, Hello Toast.

a new idiocy has arrived.

teriyaki places have long been guilty of using non-sensical or, at best, odd, Japanese words in the names. to wit, Seattle's Himitsu Teriyaki, which translates as Secret Teriyaki, in a sort of Tarzan-esque argot. (I hear Truman Capote as Lionel Twain in Murder by Death shouting, Articles! Use articles!)

what, pray tell, is the secret? that this isn't chicken?

and yet, a new level has been plunged to in the race to be idiotic in Japanese, an appellation that indeed recalled Bonjour Croissant.

Moshi Moshi Sushi (located in the lovely Sunset Square in beautiful Bellingham)

my guess is that the owners wanted it to say, in a cutesy fashion best understood by no one, Hello Sushi. of course, who greets their food?

regardless, moshi moshi is Japanese for hello, only when spoken on the telephone. when used in normal conversation, it can only be the equivalent of yelling down the street at someone who you think you might know and desperately want to get his or her attention. i.e., hey you!

pause...

add this to the list of things I've (large tongue in large cheek) decided must be brought to me for approval.

those shoes with that belt? no...

you two want to have kids? no...

you want to call your sushi shop what? no...

sigh...

april flowers

2008-04-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

yes, April has been a wet month, but I've taken whatever opportunity I could to get out and photograph. here are some of the best so far this month...

cherries:

tulips:

daffodils and narcissus:

rhododendrons:

checkerboard lilies:

lily-of-the-valley:

(very late) crocuses:

magnolias:

salmonberries:

pear blossoms:

apricot blossoms:

wake-robins:

pasqueflowers:

unknown (member of the Allium family?):

serviceberries:

chocolate lilies:

iris:

hyacinth:

grape hyacinth:

gardenia:

clematis:

calla lily:

pagoda lily:

red flowering currant:

fawn lilies:

P.S. these photos represent an interesting milestone with my camera. since its purchase in 2005, I have now exceeded the 10,000 photo mark for the second time. 20,000 photos! whew!

south of the border ineptitude

2008-04-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

(yes, after reading through this, the ultimate ineptitude is mine, I suppose, but...)

Hiro and I are living close to the bone these days. to keep on top of things, we've used his credit card, which is linked to an account in Japan, into which my Japanese clients pay me.

the thing is, this credit card is not like a US card. for one thing, as soon as the limit is exceeded, the entire card balance must be paid off before we can use it again. sometimes, what my Japanese clients pay me each month is not enough, so then we have to get money from here over to Japan.

until now, I had been using my US-based Paypal account to do this. yes, the fees are usurious, but it happens very quickly. well, for one reason or other, my US Paypal account is currently not an option (which is another story). so we created a new Paypal account tied to our checking account in Canada. we ran the transfer on 4 April and were told that it wouldn't clear until 14 April! that was standard for Canadian banks.

we had wanted to get the money to Japan by the 10th, so we decided to withdraw it from our Canada account, and, on our way to the shrine last weekend, stopped at a BoA to transfer that to US funds and then went to the US Post Office in B'ham. the fastest delivery would arrive on the 10th. we converted the cash to money orders and sent it.

the 10th comes and goes in Japan. nothing arrives. nor does it arrive during the day of the 11th (which comes before our 11th). so on the morning of our 11th I call the tracking and find that the envelope was returned as undeliverable.

I drop Hiro off at work and race down to B'ham. they find the envelope. in fact, it's the same guy who took care of it for us the preceding Saturday. why was it returned? because he forgot to tell us to sign something on the front of the envelope. he forgot.

pause...

sip water...

continue...

I reclaimed the money orders, and figured we had better convert them back to cash, deposit them into my BoA account and then shift that into the Canada account. the postal worker says he doesn't have enough cash in his register, could I come back in a few hours?

so I drive down to Mount Vernon, take several hours worth of photos, and then drive back to B'ham. the (different, this time) clerk says she doesn't have enough cash either, but she can cash the smaller one, then asks for my ID.

uh-oh. the name on the money orders says Hiro, not Brian. but I paid for these. here's the receipt. my credit card. my signature.

doesn't matter.

so this morning, Hiro and I together drive down, this time to the central post office in B'ham (figuring that they'd have more $dough$), but no, they don't. what to do?

take it to a bank, he says.

I call BoA to check on this and am told, as long as we both are present with photo IDs, BoA should be able to deposit it into my account, no problem.

okay. we drive to the nearest BoA open on Sundays and get in line. the teller says she can indeed deposit, but that it will take six days to clear my account. judas priest!

luckily, there is still enough in the Canada account to allow the Paypal transaction to go through, so I've decided, once this entry is written, to forget about this crap for now. I'll upload some of yesterday's photos to my next entry to help clear the air...

hellaciousness

2008-04-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

we live on the north side of the Fraser River, in Burnaby; Hiro works on the south side, in Delta. one way or another, I have to cross at least one bridge and usually two to get him there and back.

the most direct route involves the Queensborough and Alex Fraser bridges. between Burnaby and Delta, there are two islands that divide the Fraser. the Queensborough bridge takes us to the first island, which is really large and extends from New Westminster's Queensborough neighborhood to the river's delta in Richmond. the Queensborough Bridge and its spur highway, 91A, that connects to the main highway 91, and the Alex Fraser, have been in various phases of construction since we moved here.

first was the building of a bypass over the intersection at Howes Street in Queensborough. now they are completely redoing the north end of the bridge to eliminate the confusing way it branches off in so many directions and to ease the backups getting onto it from Burnaby and New West.

so, even in the best of times, that bridge, and 91A, are crowded. 91A isn't very long. less than 2km. more, I suppose, if you count the bridge. but it can get jammed up solid on occasion.

the Alex Fraser is another story. in the morning, going north, it is fed by the 91 and two main streets, Nordel and River Road. it usually flows fairly well, though, once all the merging is done.

in the afternoon, going south, it is fed by the 91, the 91A, and truck traffic from Annacis Island, which is home to a huge sewage treatment facility and lots of truck shipping centers. again, though, it's usually just the merges that are a problem.

then there was two days ago. Thursday. afternoon. a semi flipped on the 91, north of the bridge, in Richmond (so it's actually west of the bridge, 'cause the 91 makes a left after the Alex Fraser). all lanes of traffic were initially blocked. then one lane in each direction was squeaking by when I went to get Hiro. the damage was done. the 91 north of the Alex Fraser was a parking lot. I wasn't headed in that direction to begin with, so I was relieved. but then there was a stall on the Queensborough, northbound. the 91A turned into a parking lot back to the Alex Fraser, and the Alex Fraser northbound, now with no moving exit points was rapidly congealing.

when I picked up Hiro, I told him we'd drive up Nordel, into Surrey, and then take the Patullo Bridge, linking Surrey and New West, home. and then we heard three things on the radio.

New West Senior Secondary, the big high school in New West, was under lock-down. someone had spotted a 14 year-old kid with a gun, and the police moved in fast. not only was the school closed, but all streets in a two-block radius were shut down, crippling the northern end of New West, which was between us and our house. there was also an accident on Canada Way, fouling it up, which was another possible route we could have taken, had we gotten over the Patullo, but that route, we decided, was closed to us as well because, in the midst of everyone rerouting away from the Alex Fraser, someone got a flat on the narrow Patullo, northbound, and traffic was backing up into Surrey badly.

there was only one option open to us. drive through northern Surrey and get on the 1, the Trans-Canada, and cross the Port Mann bridge, and then get off at Gagliardi and work our way home from Cariboo and 16th in Burnaby.

except, by then, we weren't the only ones to have thought of this plan. by the time we got to within 2km of the on-ramp to the 1, on 158th Street, we were in traffic that was just inching along. once we got onto the 1, things were fine, but it took us more than a half-hour to go those 2km.

all told, it took us 2 hours to get home that day. normally, it's a 20 minute drive.

oh, and to add insult to injury, the police never caught the kid with gun, although they identified him on school video surveillance tapes (wtf?). and it wasn't even a full moon!

relieved

2008-04-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

this is my friend, Will.

I met him shortly after Hiro and I moved to Canada. he's funny, friendly, has introduced us to lots of people and restaurants, and we've traveled with him, seen movies with him, well, you get the idea...

Will was born in Taiwan but came to Canada in his early teens, and went to university here. he went to the same design school I did, which is one of the things we have in common.

a lot was going on in Will's life, and he decided he needed a break. he sold his business and went to Taiwan for a few months. while he was there, he met a wonderful man, Wilson, and fell in love. happily, we had a chance to meet Wilson as well, as he came to Vancouver in late February to see Will, meet his parents, and finalize some details.

for Will was going to live in Taiwan. which sucks, in a way, because I really miss him, but it's also wonderful that he and Wilson are so happy together.

there was, however, a specter on the horizon.

since Will is also a Taiwanese citizen, he would have to report for an Army physical upon his return. Taiwan has a mandatory draft. no one was anxious to see Will inducted, but he embarked on a plan to gain as much weight as possible before the physical. apparently the Army will disqualify you if you are overweight.

truth be told, he didn't gain that much weight. I was still very nervous, and I knew he didn't want to have to resort to playing the 'gay' card.

but when I chatted with him yesterday, he told me he had failed the physical anyway! his eyesight is too poor!

I am so relieved, and doubtless, so are Will and Wilson. Hiro and I will have to figure out how to save enough money to visit them soon.

rough work

2008-04-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

as a translator, I rarely get to choose my assignments. over the many years, I've developed a proficiency in certain fields, but I think most of my clients like the fact that I also write well into the bargain.

occasionally I get something I really enjoy. I recall, many years ago, having to do a series of magazines articles on a Japanese photographer who retraced the path of European Jews fleeing Hitler through the Japanese consulate in Lithuania, on to the Siberian railway, to Japan, and then to Shanghai, where they waited out the war before settling in the US.

last week, I just finished translating a transcript of a survivor from the atom-bombing of Hiroshima. she and her family lived outside the city, which was why she was spared, but her two sisters went to school in Hiroshima, and her eldest sister worked as a translator for the office of the Imperial Army there. Both were killed when the bomb fell. her stories of how her sister knew that she would die, of how her mother went into the city to search for her daughters, were heart-wrenching. to make matters worse, she had been born in the US, so when she returned after the war, she faced a lot of prejudice, and the man she ended up marrying had been in Manzanar during the war as well.

as I say, that was hard to get through.

Aunt Ruby?

2008-04-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

I went to a very small private school from grades seven through 12. by the time I graduated, in a class of seven, the school had classes from kindergarten through high school, but there were still only one hundred students in all.

I had some great teachers. my interest in foreign languages was born there, as well as my interests in performing and art. and I also learned how difficult it could be to come out as a gay person in that environment. I had a few friends but never really felt comfortable coming out to them until years later. thankfully, one of the people I remained friends with followed me to Japan (although she now lives and works in Cambodia). she kept me up to date on a few other people from school, especially from her class, as she was two years behind me in age.

one day, she and I spent some time wondering who, among the people we went to school with, was gay. she knew, for example, that one of her classmates, someone I had never been close to, was out and living in NYC. I was a little surprised, but not terribly. he was, as I remembered him, a nice guy, but quiet, shy.

facebook, however, has forever altered that perception of him. he actually found me first, through our mutual friendship with the woman now in Cambodia, and I added him to my friend list. he updated his status yesterday, noting that he was taking pictures for his Aunt Ruby's store on eBay. okay, I thought. but then, this morning, came an announcement from him regarding said store, complete with a photo.

wow. way to be! and I'm not being sarcastic or ironic or any of that other NYC crap I occasionally still exhibit. glass houses and all. he's very brave. and he's funny and smart, and I wish him and Aunt Ruby lots of luck.

spring in the Northwest

2008-04-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

this year has been a cold wet spring so far, and I'm really getting sick of seeing ice and hail mixed in with the rain and feeling bone-cold.

to chase the blues away, here's a number from Japan by a group that was popular in the 70s, I think, called the Candies...

rush job

2008-04-09T06:55:00.001-07:00

lately, there's been a lot of translation work on my plate. it's good, don't get me wrong, but when I feel like crap due to an oncoming cold, it's sometimes hard to feel peppy about work. anyway...

on Monday, an agency called and sent over some files in email. the client was in a rush. needed everything done today. could I take a look? two documents. both work-related, and needed for a work permit in Canada. there was also a document that was already translated in with the mix, which was supposed to be for reference. but then the agency called and said, no, that reference document was actually a translation of one of the other two docs, so I only had to do one, and could I please finish that one by five so they could courier it over? it was noon at the time, and the volume was feasible, and they offered to pay a rush fee, which they usually never do, so I said yes.

then the agency called to ask whether I could verify whether the reference translation she sent matched the original Japanese. I had a closer look. what I saw was embarrassing. either the Japanese had been machine-translated or had been done by someone very ineptly. there were words in it that didn't exist in English. sentences were nearly always in passive voice, missing subjects or other syntax errors, and, the worst sin of all, the company name had been translated verbatim. it was bizarre. I listed a few of the more egregious errors and sent it on to the agency.

I finished the other document before I had to leave the house to pick up Hiro at 3:30, so I sent it on. then the agency called to ask whether I could re-translate the other document, at a higher rush rate, by 9:00pm and drop it off downtown at a restaurant for an additional courier fee. okay.... I considered that and imagined what a real courier would charge for that time of night for an hour round-trip and named a figure.

the client ended up driving to my house instead, but the rush fees made the job worth it anyway. it was an interesting job, and I hope the end client's interview at the border yesterday morning went well. I have a feeling I'll be visiting his restaurant (for that was the business he was in), to see whether he was as good as his recommendation letters said he was.

clearing my head

2008-04-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

I think I caught a cold over the weekend. although a shrine visit is always a good reminder of many of the wonderful things about Japan I miss, there are also a few things about Japan that the shrine can remind me of that I patently do not miss. such as the lack of central heating.

the shrine is in the Cascade foothills, in Granite Falls, and it is generally a cool location anyway, but with the colder than normal spring we've been having, it's been downright cold there. a few miles up the road, toward Concrete and further up into the Cascades, and it's still snowing. a foot a day in some spots, they say.

the place where we spent the night, Tsubaki House, was certainly warm. we just spent a lot of time at the shrine as well. and it's cold there. to make matters worse (as far as my immune system goes, I suppose), on the way down we stopped in Mount Vernon, at Roozengarde, for the tulip festival, to take some photos. light-wise, the weather was perfect. a little overcast with some sunlight breaking through. but temperature-wise... it was barely 50 degrees, and the wind was brisk. and most of the tulips hadn't even opened. the daffodils were great, though.

early on Sunday, shrine activities began with misogi, a cleansing ritual that involves participants washing themselves in the bracingly cold river that runs by the shrine. this water is snow-melt, so that explains why we could hear the chants of the participants all the way up at Tsubaki House, where I was busy taking macro photos of one of the kimonos on display.

Hiro and I then walked down to the shrine to join them for tea, followed by morning prayers. once prayers ended, the reverend turned to us all and said, let's rock and roll. it was so unexpected, I had to laugh. but yes, we needed to get busy preparing for the Great Spring Festival. the offerings had to be readied and in place, shrine guests welcomed, and so on. we were given shrine happi coats to wear, but as they were Japanese-size, only Hiro could wear his, and that, just barely. but he looked good in it.

after the ceremony, we also helped to clean things up a little, but the real reason Hiro wanted to come was about to begin. the making of mochi. glutinous rice is steamed until it is cooked and sticky, and then transferred to a large wooden mortar. three or more people then use wooden pestles shaped like large blunt axes to pound the rice into a solid sticky mass. once it becomes to come together, one person continues to pound while another, keeping his hands wet with hot water, reaches into the mortar to stretch and fold the mass of rice until it is thoroughly homogenized. this ball of mochi, or rice cake, is removed from the mortar to a pan dusted with rice flour and then squeezed into little rounds around pieces of sweet red bean jam. you can buy these at most Japanese food stores, because they freeze well, but there is nothing quite like the taste of freshly made mochi. my favorite is when they add yomogi, or mugwort, to the rice as they pound it, which gives the result a green, flecked, appearance and a wonderful herbal taste.

(by the way, I think the young man at left in the photo is quite a cutie. and what's up with that tattoo?)

here's a few of the more artistic photos I took at the shrine:

and to end, one of a little girl who could barely wait for more mochi to be made. she made sure she was first in line!

completely different

2008-04-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

(before I talk about my weekend and all the crazy stuff going on, here's a diversion...)

Thanks, Patrick!

a night away

2008-04-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

it's been a crazy hectic week once again, but this weekend we are taking advantage of an invitation from the guji, or reverend, of the Shinto shrine Hiro and I visit in Granite Falls, Tsubaki Shrine.

Rev. Barrish and his wife, Chika, invited Hiro and I to stay at the shrine's guest house tonight, and to be present tomorrow at the shunki taisai (Great Spring Festival). when you pray at a Shinto shrine, the guji faces the altar, and the altar, which contains the embodiment of divine energy, is closed. the shunki taisai is one of only two times a year when the altar is opened and the guji faces the worshippers, directing the energy from the divine right to us. I've never been to this ceremony and I am looking forward to attending.

in addition, since we will pass through Mount Vernon on our way, I am planning to stop at three of my favorite places to take photos: the WSU Skagit Display Gardens, Christianson's Nursery and Roozengarde, the huge tulip farm, to see their annual display of tulips. It's tulip season in the Skagit Valley, so it should be beautiful. to sweeten the deal, I've promised a visit to a farm stand that Hiro has never been to, called the Gray Goose, I think, where they serve very delicious homemade ice cream.

and of course, on the way home, we will stop at Costco and Trader Joe's to stock up.

banking grumble

2008-04-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but the process of clearing for Canadian banks takes much longer than it does in the US. for example, for a check drawn on a US bank, we would need to wait as long as 20 business days for it to clear. so I maintained my BoA account specifically for that purpose. the good news is that BoA has a deal with Scotia whereby you can withdraw funds from a BoA account at a Scotia branch and not incur any fees.

we just encountered another clearing hassle. we need to send money to Japan pronto. I figured Paypal. I set up the account to tie to my Canadian bank account, and then initiated the payment, only to be told it would take ten days to clear the account in Canada (followed by the four days it'll take to clear in Japan). that's insane. we don't actually have that much time to wait so our best option is to send a postal transfer by express. the only problem is Paypal doesn't let you cancel a payment while it's processing, but that's another grumble...

amazing design!

2008-04-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

Great Britain has redesigned its coinage.

It is amazingly cool how the coins show only a snippet of the insignia. I love this!

Another Hiro...

2008-04-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

I'd seen noni juice at Costco before, but it struck me as just another over-priced fad... Well, Tahitian Noni is now being marketed big in Canada and the juice products are all called Hiro.

Someone at the office left one on Hiro's desk today. I hope he chuckled.

Turkey in the Straw?

2008-04-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

After one week very early in March when things warmed up very nicely, it's been a cold spring. The magnolias that were tricked into opening early suffered from floppy blooms as a result. We even had brief hits of intense snow and hail last week.

So I was more than a little surprised to hear an ice cream truck drive by just now.

And why would the music it plays be Turkey in the Straw? Does that song have anything to do with ice cream at all?

Japanese bizarreness

2008-04-02T15:17:00.001-07:00

a friend forwarded this video to Hiro. it's from a Japanese variety program, where ordinary people come on as guests to introduce their special talent. the special talent in question? a unique way to peel bananas...