Sharon Kong! (Thursday March 22 2007)

This'll be another kaleidoscope, I'm afraid... the downside with "expressing myself spontaneously" (aka not taking notes on what we do) is that it means my opening paragraphs are depressingly shapeless. You don't always notice that because I rewrite. It's as a kindness to all that I keep my first drafts on a leash, and usually indoors.

I turned 37 on Tuesday, March 20. Great love to everyone who called, emailed, or carded me then or thenabouts. Particular love to my Posse back home, who bought me...



... an inflatable Dalek! Genius!






It's adorable! It looks like it has ears. It took one hell of a lot of inflating, though. Excellently, on the side of the base it says "This is not a lifesaving device". Of course it isn't! It's a Dalek! It's the epitome of death-dealing devices! You don't see Doctor Who calling out "Hold on, Rose, I'll save you from drowning!" and a moment later there's an enormous splash, a very unhappy electronic squawk, and some loud sparking noises. (Although who can tell what will happen, these days.)

For my birthday we went to see 300. This is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller. Which was good at the time, ten years or so ago, but which isn't really comparable to, say, Gates Of Fire by Stephen Pressfield. The big problems with the film are: with the ending pretty much common knowledge, there's not even the Dirty Dozen / Magnificent Seven feeling of "which of these poor bastards will die, and when?" (only one even faintly recognisable character dies before the final slaughter, which is over in seconds)... and as a film it sucks, with narration recapitulating action, and some of the most variable special effects around (Sparta is made out of cardboard in the long shots, and the sets in general are rubbish). The special effects at their best are pretty impressive, but the film is empty, and offensively unoriginal in many ways. "Look, I have cornfields and a microtonal female vocal just like Gladiator - love me!" To conclude, this was one of the most spectacular-and-yet-still-shit movies we've seen in a while. So we mocked it a bit over food at Kalypso, and then came home. Thus Panda birthday.

So: we have a new apartment, at 1060 Alberni Street. We've signed, paid, obtained the keys, used the facilities, and had our first delivery. But we still don't live there; there's no furniture. We need to sort this out by the end of the month, when we leave Nelson Street. We trogged down to Richmond at the weekend to check out Ikea, where we bought a lot of useful bits and pieces, and some other furniture places, where we noted a table & chairs set and a futon, to be ordered this weekend. The bed we want will take a while to arrive, so we need a temporary solution which can persist as useful furniture in the absence of guests. Whether we can survive even one night on a futon, I'm not sure. If not then it's to the cheap bed shop, beezees!

The facilities at Alberni are great. The pool is about thirty metres and Sarah has been getting back into the swim of things... ahhh yes, I'm knocking 'em out of the park tonight... while I've introduced myself to the joys of spending a while in the sauna and then having a cold shower. Rinse (while freezing) and repeat. Whoever it was who told me this is the way to do it was having a laugh! However, if it adds a spectacular sheen of health (or at least wideawakefulness) to my complexion then I'll grin and bear it. While screaming.

The solitary delivery to Alberni has been Sarah's new keyboard. While we're a little concerned that some of the keys rattle, it seems basically quite good. It was furnished by Tom Lee Music on Granville after a lengthy umming-and-ahhing session by the bunny, but fair enough, it's a big decision. Obviously, even without the rattling-keys issue, it's not the same as our piano. I hope it's getting some usage in Brenda's house. Hello Justine's mum! (Yeah, you heard, your absolute mum!)

When you live in an apartment many things are strange, and one of the strangest is access to your apartment for strangers. You get a buzzer code - which is unrelated to your apartment number, for obvious reasons - which enables people to use the entryphone to call your apartment phone. Pressing 6 or sometimes 9 lets them in and turns on your floor as a valid destination for the elevator for a couple of minutes. (Normally the elevators require you to swipe your electronic fob-key to get access to your floor, or to common privileged areas such as the facilities or the basement car-park.) This is how it works for delivered food, anyway. For parcels, they tend to just leave a sticker on the front doors of the block, saying which apartment is due a package. And for regular mail - that gets delivered alright, but is sorted (not sure by whom, probably some minwag) and placed in small lockers, one per apartment, to which you have key access.

Clear?

Well, all your junk mail goes in that little box too, unless you put in a sticker to skip it. Why anyone wouldn't, I'm not sure. Because you get a *ton* of junk mail. Here's what we got in three days at Alberni:

- 28-page Sears clothing catalogue (Sears is basically Debenhams)
- ad for Primus broadband
- 8-page catalogue for Shoppers Drug Mart (basically Superdrug)
- ad for new apartments on 2nd and Main
- 24-page catalogue for Best Buy (basically Dixons)
- 28-page catalogue for London Drug (basically Boots)
- 32-page Sears general catalogue
- 24-page Future Shop catalogue (basically PC World)
- 12-page Loomis Art Store catalogue (an art supplies shop can afford this kind of crap!)
- another 32-page Sears general catalogue (getting bored of Sears now, and it doesn't help that their logo reminds me of Sega)
- 24-page Canadian Tire catalogue (eh, bikes and tyres, that's TYRES, people, and stuff)
- badly-printed-and-folded A4 leaflet for a private tax consultant
- ad for Variety Lottery
- ad for Linda Woo, realtor
- ad for Panago fast food
- the first 28-page Sears clothing catalogue, again
- the Primus broadband thing, again
- the Best Buy thing, again
- the Shoppers Drug Mart thing, again
- apartments at 2nd and Main, again
- Future Shop, again
- Loomis Art Store, again
- Sears again
- Canadian Tire again
- London Drugs again
- the third Sears one again
- Variety Lottery, again
- the tax guy, again

The pile weighs in at about 2lb. I'll be charitable and assume that with the number of duplicates, we got two separate deliveries of junk mail. Perhaps they happen every other day. But that still means a pound, by weight, of junk. Per apartment, most likely, so that's 150lb of junk mail in our block, or something like half a ton - in a fortnight. For one apartment block. From where I'm sitting I can see thirty of them, and that's just the tall ones.

The environmental lifestyle here is very grass-roots - it would have to be, seeing as how companies clearly don't give a good goddamn about it. BC Hydro, the electricity company, has a green power certificates system whereby you can pay more for your power and they'll ensure that more renewable energy enters the grid... I think. I have some vague recollection that British Gas has a similar green power thing. It all seems a bit pointless to me now I think about it. Another case of how what we need to do is not pay extra money to existing companies for 'greenification', but to do something dramatic, like banning cars, or shooting realtors.

I mention realtors (estate agents) in particular because I find it interesting that out here, and in America, realty is a very personal, trust-based thing. Agencies sell themselves on a single very marketable face (or sometimes two). The epitome of pushy realty must be Sharon Kong, who managed to stuff half a dozen of her glossy leaflets into our Nelson Street mailbox in the brief gap between the last tenant leaving and us moving in. Her site beggars belief for anyone used to the self-effacement of crusty English property businesses. But they're all like that. Trustworthy-looking, trustworthiness-radiating, trusty realtors grin confidently from the pages of all the real estate magazines. Obviously this one person cannot possibly do all the work; he or she probably has a staff of minwags and maxwags to take care of the grubby details, and also I get the impression that these people work for bigger companies but are able (or possibly obliged) to do their own advertising in order to earn their commissions. I haven't seen Glengarry Glen Ross; that would probably clarify things for me. But the sell, from my point of view, is all about this solitary expert, who has worked in the area for however many years (perhaps as a maxwag at someone else's company, but don't spoil the effect) and who is subtly pushing a subtext along the lines of "It's you and me against big business, good people - c'mon, let's work together". It's pernicious, it's marketing, and it's how it's done here. I just find it interesting that in England, even if there is a charismatic person at an estate agents', or even if the agency is named after one or two key people (which they usually are) they wouldn't dare actually stand in front of the camera and strike a trustworthy pose for the print ads. Also, in England most estate agencies tend to get swallowed up into chains. I don't think they have those here. Pretty much everyone's a member of the same trade association, and all their rental and purchase properties get posted on a single massive website called the MLS - although there's generally a bit of a delay while the selling agent pushes some private buttons. It's useful and technically impressive.

But the main thing I want you to think about, now we've reached the end of that brief discourse on realtors, is the brilliance of the name "Sharon Kong". Say it with me one more time. Sharon Kong. Superb. Like an absolute Kong.

Choir continues. We're singing songs in about seven languages. I still don't like this, xenophobic as I am (or at least as I'm turning out to be now I've come here). Some of them are tolerable. Sarah continues to dazzle, exhibiting excellent Bunny Self-Confidence in attempting to find something she can't sight-read in one go. Still no luck. I've introduced my fellow tenor James (artist in glass and director of a chamber choir) to the mandatory concept of singing like a god. He seems reasonably taken with it but I sense it's very new to him. But really, a spot of good old-fashioned arrogance is good for any singer (provided they're any good).

More computer games. Sarah has been playing Fairy Godmother Tycoon, and I've been playing the Mystery Case Files games. The MCF games are essentially Where's Wally with objects instead of Wally and his extended family. With the clock ticking, you're presented with a beautiful picture of a room, filled with things of all descriptions... and asked to find a handful of specific objects. And you have to look hard. Real hard. Here's an example:



Can you find all the objects it lists down the side? Nice and smooth - well, it is the first room. In later rooms I found myself announcing with disturbing regularity, "You are clearly having a giraffe..." - in fact in one room you do have to find a giraffe. The problem is, objects might be present in their literal form, or reduced in size for no good reason, or they might be toys, or pictures, or part of the wallpaper, or blended in with something else which disguises their shape, or half off screen, or recoloured, or... god, it's a nightmare. It's one of the best games I've ever played. And there's three of them! Woohoo! Off to Big Fish Games you go to try them.

I must also say that the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation game I tried last weekend was pretty good. I have Law & Order games to play too. Who knew you could make games out of this kind of television?

Pictures!

They have big rainbows here.



And cute pandas on soy sauce packets.



This is the church where we sing on Wednesdays.



This is the world's crappiest sofa bed. It looks like the sofa bed equivalent of the car that comes off worse at the end of a Herbie movie. I do not foresee us - or anyone else - buying this shameful item from Ikea...



These, on the other hand, are two great cushions from the futon shop. Even though we couldn't make up our minds about which futon to get, we knew we needed these. Thirty quid the pair.



Highlights from the St Patrick's Day parade on Granville Street, courtesy of a bunny who went out to investigate it:












'Utilikilts', I ask you.

Poetic and pithy engravings around a tree somewhere in midtown:



My attitude in a nutshell - outside the big stadium:



Yes! Because this really sells it to me!



Outside the BC Hydro building:



Shiny! I have no idea where this is, though. Sarah clearly went marauding without me in the daytime.



That big-ass rainbow effect again:



And again:



The construction going on across from Alberni Street. Reasonably ignorable, we hope. Haven't tried sleeping through it yet, obviously.



The vertiginous view from the twentieth floor. I can't actually go near the open windows. I feel like I'm being sucked out into the open air.



And now, a bunny magic trick! Observe this box! A perfectly innocent box! A dull, ordinary box, you might think!



But! Ta-da! Actually - it's a keyboard! You can imagine the fun Sarah had assembling that...



Yo, 'm'out. Next time, eh?