Tagged with bus …

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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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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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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Jun 26 2011
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australia, travel

bairnsdale the first

I maintain my love of sleeper trains, but even the Melbourne-Bairnsdale bus today was pretty good. What the busride had over the trainride was its daylight hours, so I could actually expect the Australia rolling past me.

I keep having to remind myself that it’s winter here, since everything is so green. Rural Victoria (at least in the Gippsland direction) looks like a lot of dairy and sheep farms. It’s kind of hilly (in a way more bulbous than rolling) and off in the distance are mountainish looking things.

There was a weird stretch where there were these erratic dead, branchless tress studding the fields like bones in compound fractures. It was kind of ominous, but fairly localized.

I like how the trees are different from North American trees. You see a clump of trees in a field and that’s fine and then when you pass close by it’s like no northern tree you’d care to think of, all made of ropes entwined on itself. When I was out walking I thought about how knowing more about plants would probably get me amazed at the differences in the ground cover and grasses and all that too. But trees are big enough to be noticeable.

Bairnsdale is a small town and my motel is about a mile from the train station and town square. This is because of a mixup in the recommendation process wherein someone thought a restaurant was a hotel (well, it is called a hotel but that doesn’t seem to mean anything about lodging here) and quoted us the price of the motel with the one-letter-off name. When we couldn’t book a room at the restaurant we assumed the recommender had mistyped the name, rather than that she was recommending I sleep in a restaurant.

It’s not a bad little town. I had all of Sunday afternoon to wander around. There’s a village and a really tall-spired church and not much is open past 2pm on a Sunday afternoon.

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Apr 26 2011
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books, religion, sports, vancouver, 中国

so close to vagabondery

Yesterday I did my advance voting and there was an Indian gentleman in line in front of me. He was probably in his fifties or sixties and he was pissed off at the election volunteers. See, he gave them ID when they asked and then they had the temerity to ask for something with his address on it (as per Elections Canada rules). He seemed to take it as an affront to his citizenship, saying stuff like “I have lived here for these forty years! You are wrong” Why do you want me not to vote? Fine! I will not vote!” The volunteers were saying that they just needed a bill or something that proved he was voting in the correct place, but he was just angry and convinced everyone was stupid but him. After the supervisor came over to help, he stormed out, leaving his passport behind so he could go get “some stupid piece of paper that I don’t even need!” They were really happy when I was easy to manage.

Then I picked up a pile of great books from Abraham, one of my classmates. A whole shwack of stuff about Chinese history and language and religion, plus a bunch of Italo Calvino books. So good. He’s pared down his books to two boxes which is really impressive. Some days I feel like I’d like to do that. But my books are important to me. I’m not as conflicted about them as I was last year. We’ll see how I feel when I move them away from Vancouver.

And today I packed up all my books and clothes into my storage space. I was very conscious of the order I put stuff in there today, so the most necessary books are more accessible than the infamous theology books. Also, my winter gear is right at the front and accessible for when Holly and I return in December from the height of Antipodean summer and stop off to go to Virginia for Xmas (and for me to make Santa Claus jokes I’m sure no one in that state has ever heard).

I like living in a city undergoing a traumatic sporting event. Everywhere today, people have been talking about this Canucks game tonight. The buses always have their Go Canucks Go signs in their lights, but today they felt a little more urgent. At the van rental place the guy said they might be closed by the time I returned the van “because, y’know, the game.” We’re hosting (I say “we” and “hosting” in the same sentence like I’m actually doing stuff beyond showing up – hell, Marlis is cleaning the kitchen right now while I type) a potluck tonight but it came to our attention that we’ll need to have the hockey streaming or else everyone would stay home. I doubt it’ll be like this in Winnipeg if they really do get an NHL team back, but maybe I’m just a pessimist.

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Feb 25 2011
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school, vancouver

i salute you, guy i heard so much about

I went to get my film developed from when Holly was here and because I’m being all fancy-pants and shooting black & white I can’t get it developed at a normal place. Off to a fancy-pants lab for me tomorrow. Also tomorrow, off to school.

On the bus to the place I couldn’t get my film developed, two women were talking about how a guy they knew was fired. The management sounded pretty terrible, suspending him until he’d sign a self-incriminating letter full of lies, and then firing him for not signing it because he wasn’t “negotiating with the company in good faith.” I was only on the bus for two stops but I heard enough to get really mad on behalf of this guy. Signing self-incriminating letters is bullshit, random guy I’ve never met! Way to get fired (and talk to a lawyer) instead.

Brenda & Marlis are gone on a ski-trip so I have the house to myself. Woo. Not that it makes much of a difference one way or another. I just don’t have to feel terrible about leaving the dishes in the sink overnight. I have issues with dishwashers, not wanting to use them kinds of issues.

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Oct 08 2010
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travel, vancouver, whining, 中国

what money can buy

This morning I took my sniffly head down to the Chinese Consulate’s visa office. Being in Vancouver now, I was kind of happy to be able to have such a hassle free alternative to my usual Xpressposting across the country and paying an agent to deal with it and all that. The actual office is a busride away! What could be simpler?

The room was stuffed to the gills with people. There were at least four different lines, none of which were labelled. I stood in a long one for ten minutes before noticing people with forms that looked like more mine in a much shorter line, so I bailed for it. Then after a few minutes I noticed everyone in my new line had a ticket indicating what number they were. “Where did you get that?” I asked the guy behind me and he waved behind both of us at a lineup for talking to what I’d thought was a security guard. So I left for that line and then thought about it a bit.

This new line to get a number for the other line was long. Then I’d be waiting at least 50 numbers to drop off my form. This was going to take hours. I did a quick evaluation of what my time is worth and decided to leave.

There was a China Travel Services place down the block. It had the same fonts they do in the PRC, so I felt very at home. I went in and found out their fee was $25 to handle that room for me and call me when my visa was ready. So that’s what I did, short-circuiting the story of how I spent my Friday trapped in bureaucracy hell. I’d say it was a good value.

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Aug 29 2010
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school, vancouver

local

The other day when I took the bus up to UBC I decided it was good I’m living where I am instead of closer to school. It felt a bit like it would be easy to forget about the rest of town if I were up there. I mean, sure, it’d be more convenient for classes, but this way I feel a bit more like I actually live here. I mean, I didn’t feel like I actually lived in fakeLondon and I want to here. I live within walking distance (my walking distance may be different from yours, sorry) of loads of good shit here, even if the closest full-on grocery store is in a weird little mall.

Today I went to Comix & Stories, which was the indie comic con put on by Vancouver Comic Con? I think? In any case there were people there who made cool stuff and I bought things. Because I’m still getting paid even though I don’t have a job anymore. Oh no? That’s not how it works? Hm. That would work much better for me.

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Jul 03 2010
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winnipeg

charlie bronson

On the walk to the bus this morning it started raining. I never know when I catch the 8:30 bus exactly when it’s going to get there, and last week I missed a bus to work, so I didn’t want to stop and pull out my jacket on the walk. I waited till I got to the bus shack.

In the bus shack was a native guy in maybe his late forties, sitting on the bench. He was wearing a black suit with beat-up loafers and a black t-shirt that appeared to have a starfield on it. A wooden disc with a bear on it hanging around his neck. I opened up my bag and pulled out my jacket, and this guy was watching me, waiting to start a conversation.

“Yeah, it’s a good thing you’ve got a jacket,” he said. “You can get sick in the rain.”

“Yep you can,” I replied, putting my music on pause.

“Pneumonia. You don’t want that.”

“No I don’t. That’s why I brought my jacket.”

“Yep. Good thing. More than that too. All sorts of diseases from the rain. You know, cause of how much pollution there is in it now. You walk out in that and you get sick.”

I kind of nodded, noncommittal, and checked if I could see my bus.

“Yeah,” he continued, “you don’t want to mess around with the rain. I know.” He sounded self-consciously “wise” saying this. Like this was one of those things he knew he could tell a skinny little white boy. “I know a few things. I’m 57, you know. Don’t smoke.”

I had to nod again. “You look good.” He did. I would not have pegged him as being older than my mom.

“Yeah. How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“That old? My son’s thirty one. He lives in Vancouver. He’s a fisherman. And builds houses. What’s your name?”

I told him and we shook hands.

“I’m Charlie Bronson.”

I stopped. Not that I thought he was Charles Bronson, but the resemblance was why I felt like I’d recognized him. Because of this I completely missed his real name. “Charlie’s just what they call me,” he laughed.

And then the bus came and I left, saying “Nice to meet you.” It was still raining and he remained sitting inside, waiting for the next person to come along.

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