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Feb 18 2012
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school, sports, vancouver

biking and the inevitable decay of all flesh

I neglected to ride my bike to school on Wednesday. No, not neglected. I chose not to, because I wanted to finish the book I was reading on the bus. Which worked out, but man oh man I get frustrated waiting for overcrowded buses to get me home when I could be moving. I decided to bike on Friday to my 8am class to make up for the frustration (even though my schedule works well for comfortable Friday busing).

Part of not biking on Wednesday was because I failed to make it the whole way up the hill on Monday. Now, I was never really in shape as a younger man, so I don’t have any real notion of being past my peak. I have friends who complain about being sore after playing sports that they used to do without ill effects. I have always had ill effects from sports, so I don’t have some better time to compare things to. Due solely to never pushing my physical limits when I was younger, I still feel like I have room to improve my strength and fitness and whatever. Anything I did yesterday I should be able to do tomorrow.

So on Monday when I had to stop and walk my bike up the last 10 metres to my normal “pause to survey the city” point, it sucked. And because it sucked I was scared that maybe that had been it, and I’d never be able to climb that hill again. But on Friday at sometime after 7am I did climb it in my normal fashion, and it was a bit of a relief.

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Feb 10 2012
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school, travel, vancouver

what passes for contemplative geography

One of my profs is in Toronto for the iConference this week (where people from the iSchools get together and do informationy kinds of things) so I didn’t have to go to my normal 8am class today, which I appreciated, but it’s making me feel like school is entirely an illusion. And since that means unlike every other library school student in the history of the world apparently, I have lots of free time (still being unemployed) I got a good pile of stuff done the last couple of days (most of it very boring, like catching up on my book reviews).

Looking west
This afternoon though, I went walking up the seawall and looked at the cargo ships sitting out in the Burrard Inlet (or Salish Sea or possibly all the way out to the Strait of Georgia). I like being able to do that. It’s some sort of connection to the world in terms of physical objects that’ll be crossing the ocean and I get to see them as they leave. I guess a lot of them just have oil or some other planet-killing thing in them. Or they’re just going down to Seattle and not on a real voyage at all. But still.

Another thing I love here is how the mix of hills and water give you great views of the city. When I bike home from school I get to fly down the terrible hill I’ve fought my way up already once that day, and there’s this gap created by English Bay that lets me see all the lights of downtown, and up in North Vancouver and way out east. I don’t have to pedal and I can just look at the city as I speed down into it again (well, into Kits, but close enough). And then when I’m climbing up over the Burrard Bridge you feel right in and above all the lights. It’s these bits of perspective before getting swallowed up in the urban canyons that I love.

I don’t know if I’m staying in Vancouver past my degree’s end, but if I leave these are things I’ll miss.

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Jan 24 2012
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journalism, library, school, tech, vancouver

a job i am totally applying for

Today, moments after I hung up from Skyping with my mom, I found a job I really want. I mention Skyping with my mom because in that conversation I’d been talking about how when I graduate I’ll be looking for work all over the place, and how one of the upsides of being unattached is being able to be mobile, and all that jazz, but also how I’d only try working in the U.S. if it was a great job. We talked about places I’d be more or less interested in. At no point in this conversation did Alaska come up.

Of course, Alaska is where this job I found is.

But I think I’d be a pretty excellent New Media Producer for the Juneau NPR affiliate. Here’s a snippet of the job description:

… an individual with experience and skills in journalism and online content management, including writing and editing for the web, graphic design and site management.

I could completely do that. And do that really well. And it would actually integrate my journalism side with my digital librarianish side (you know, content management kinds of things).

Anyway, I’m putting together an application for them. It’s probably a bit of a long shot (I am a foreigner and all), and it’d mean I’d have to finish my MLIS with a couple of web-delivered courses (which wouldn’t be a big deal), but it could be neat.

Sorry this didn’t happen an hour before you called, Mom. I might have been more excitable.

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Jan 19 2012
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library, school, vancouver

two bits without a segue

I did not get the job at the Art, Architecture and Planning library at UBC. Selah. I did get a very nice phone call from the librarian who interviewed me (along with two other staffmembers) saying that I did a fine job in the interview and he was sure my experience would be great for somewhere in the future, but they were going with a candidate who had a lot of experience with local art. Which isn’t something I could have made myself be, so yeah. It’s the kind of situation where their priorities were just things I couldn’t fill. I hear that happens sometimes.

The shitty thing is that was probably the last formal GAA position I could possibly have gotten at UBC. I don’t think they do those just for the summer months, and come September I won’t be a student any longer. So that means I won’t have any academic library experience on my resume when I’m off looking for work. I’ve been trying to diversify through this degree, not focus, but we’ll see how much that helps, or if I’ll just be every employer’s second choice when the real jobhunting comes around.

When I was coming home from school yesterday (on the bus because I don’t feel like biking through slush and snow with my fenderless bike) the second bus I got onto wafted with the aroma of weed. It was incredibly strong for a place where no one was smoking. I sat down and another guy got on and as he walked towards the back he just started grinning. “Now this is a Vancouver bus!” he said to no one in particular. A conversation began between a bunch of the people in the back about the guy who had just gotten off the bus, who had been the source of the smells. It was all very friendly and good-natured, about the blessings of being in Canada. Eventually the guy who’d been grinning and who’d started the talking wound it up with “All right. Enough of that. Everyone can go back to their iPhones now.”

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Jan 16 2012
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books, library, school, vancouver

the difference a phone call makes

My weekend was spent working on an annotated bibliography, a topic briefing, and reading. There was reading involved in the first two parts as well, but well, yeah. Yesterday I took a break from my indoorsyness and went for a walk down to the water to watch the seaplanes land and take off again. I enjoy how Canadian that feels, with the mountains and the water and the trees, right here in the city.

My weekend was also kind of crappy with my lack of being called about the most recent student librarian gig I’d applied for. On the posting it said the interviews were going to be today, so when I didn’t hear anything by 5pm on Friday I figured that was yet another job missed somehow. I dwelt on what I could possibly have done to make my application better, brooded on the possibilities of ever finding a job when I graduate without recent library experience, and generally buried my head in books.

And then this morning I got a call saying I’ve got an interview tomorrow. So that’s all right then. I still might not get the job, but I’ve got a chance. A little bit of income, and the experience in a university library setting, would be so very excellent.

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Jan 10 2012
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books, library, school, vancouver, whining

the studenty life

Today I gathered texts for assignments all day. Woo. Our management class has its first assignment due in a couple of weeks, and that requires a whole hell of a lot of books on management and economics and libraries to be annotated for a bibliography. Don’t you wish you were in library school?

Doing this kind of thing is much easier than I imagine it used to be when you couldn’t lie in bed with your laptop all day, reserving books from all over the area to be delivered to places conducive to being picked up, or just getting the documents loaded onto your computer. I did go out to the VPL to grab a stack of books. Just for the thrill of going to the library and hurting my shoulder by overloading my bag.

And I did laundry and bought groceries. Wee. Exciting. Aren’t you glad I’m writing about this?

So many of my classmates seem so much more busy than me. All with their multiple jobs and things. I’ve just got my classes and the assignments, which I might as well do now since maybe I’ll be getting a job at some point to cut into my schoolwork time. This term I don’t have any pressing reason to get my school stuff done early, but I’ve kind of gotten the habit started so it seems better to be working on that stuff than not. It’s basically procrastination from writing or thinking about the future to be working on homework.

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Jan 06 2012
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australia, school, vancouver, whining

surrounded by boxes

My first week back at school is done. I still have to have my first Management class on Monday night, and a bunch of meetings that’ll determine how my term’ll go, but it’s been pretty okay.

I got my rental bond refund from the Sydney apartment today so that was nice. There’d been a lot of back and forth with our landlord’s rental agent that had been giving me worries. I know that his parasitic trying to worm an extra hundred dollars out of me while telling me he’d my friend is just his job, but man, does that kind of stuff get me angry. I needed him to sign a form so I could get the bond money back, but he said he couldn’t do it so he’d get the landlord to do it that afternoon and fax it in. A week later I had to call him again to find out why it hadn’t been done and then there were stories of papers getting lost and blah blah blah. I really didn’t want to get mad about the money, but it’s a big enough sum to cover two months of my Vancouver rent.

I hate getting mad about things like that. I mean, I knew I was in the right, and the agent wasn’t doing his job well (or was trying to pull something). But just being right doesn’t mean much at all. I used to be better at dealing with that kind of thing. I think. The condo broke me, made me so unhappy and paranoid when it comes to those kinds of matters. I can still feel it here, like something’s going to happen and I’m going to have to move all my stuff out of this apartment (which I quite like).

All of that to explain why my room still looks like I’m living out of a suitcase. It’s hard to know how much unpacking and settling to do here. I might be staying a long time, but maybe I won’t. In Sydney I lived out of two carryon bags for eight months (the amount of time I have left in this degree), so all the crap strewn about already seems wasteful, and that’s with only one bookcase taken out of storage. But the more you settle in the crappier the moving on later is.

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Jan 04 2012
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library, school, vancouver

cycling to school can now begin

I kind of wanted to bike to school today, but didn’t because I couldn’t find my red flashing light. There isn’t very much of me that wants to be riding around in the dark without something telling vehicles not to hit my fragile little body. Now I’ve got that sorted so tomorrow I shall set out to regain my fitness. Be prepared for a couple of weeks of me complaining mightily about this city’s stupid hills.

Classes began today and I think this Children’s Literature course will be good. And I know more people than I’d expected to be in the Management class. As it stands right now, since I have to take a course and a bit in the summer anyway, my data visualization class which starts tomorrow is a provisional class. It’d be some interesting stuff, but I’m interested in a bunch of the summer offerings so dropping it wouldn’t be too terrible.

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Sep 10 2011
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australia, books, food, school, travel

heading to victoria again

Tonight I get on the train to small-town Victoria again to do some training at a regional health library. Woo! Actually that’s not even a sarcastic woo, because Holly’s going to come too. She has to take an earlier train back than me so she can get to work on time (stupid-early-o-clock) but I’m going to be working anyway.

Maybe we won’t exhaust all the excitement Shepparton has to offer right away, but if we do, Holly’ll get to at least spice it up by driving. We’re renting a car and while she can legally drive here, I don’t have a license for Australia (apparently you can use your North American one for three months, which I have been here longer than).

This is sort of a warmup for December when we’re planning a bit more extensive roadtripping up to my friend Mel’s place and maybe inland a ways. I like deserts.

Other than this excitement, things are just ticking along. Holly made Chinese noodles last night that tasted very approximately like the noodles you get everywhere in Nanchong. She’s in charge of that kind of cooking – specific cooking. My technique is more “Let’s combine a bunch of stuff and see what happens” which isn’t untasty, but it’s hard to know how to make something happen.

I’m reading a bunch of SF&F books for the class I’m taking, which is a fun way to spend my time. Not that I didn’t enjoy my recent social media class, but reading about Vikings and faery and space travel and thinly veiled Christian allegories is a much nicer way to spend a Saturday.

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