07 June 2009
Visa's For The China Trip
07/06/09 06:01
An eventful week. On Thursday we took the day off from work, caught the earliest ferry to Vancouver, and got our Visas for China. The trip was tiring but it actually went very smoothly. The PRC Visa office was surprisingly large, to us anyway. It was set up to process hundreds of Visa applications per day. The rule is simple. Let the process run no matter how confusing it may be and you'll get through. The only unfortunate bit of the whole trip happened on the way back. It was a hot day. More about that later. When we got to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Slip we decided that rather than waiting for three hours in the car, we'd wander around the port shops. We wandered down, read the paper, had an ice cream cone, and generally wasted a couple of hours. We got back to the car around 45 minutes before loading. The car was HOT. It had been sitting in the sun and while the outside air was well over 30 degrees C, inside the car it was somewhere over 45. C. We turned on the air to cool the car down. This was the Prius so the AC ran on the battery for about 10 minutes. Then the engine started up. We let it run for three or four minutes to finish cooling and to top off the battery again. Just about the time we were going to shut the car down, some guy hopped out of one of the cars a little way in front of us, walked back and read us the riot act. He went on about how we were NOT supposed to let our car run while in line, and how it was polluting the air that ALL of us had to breathe. I started to say how the Prius ran on the battery most of the time and we were about to shut it down anyway. But he was too busy being a self-righteous twit and feeling smug to listen. We just shrugged it off and proceeded to shut the car down as we had planned. The thing that got us was that he walked back to his car lit a cigarette and proceeded to smoke for the remainder of the wait. I was sorely tempted to point out that each one of the cigs he went through polluted the air more than the Prius would have had we left it running for the whole three hours. I decided not to though.
As I mentioned before it has been hot this week. An unusual continental high has formed and gotten stuck over Alberta. This has reversed the normal wind patterns so that instead of clean and cool westerly wind off of the Pacific the wind is blowing from the east bringing the heat from the prairies. Nearly every day it has topped out over 30. The AC in one of the server rooms failed and we had to scuttle around getting a replacement unit, which was rather hard to find. Most places were sold out. Between the heat, the ozone from the heat, and the smoke from several large forest fires up near the BC-Yukon border the air quality has not been that great. It looks like the block has started to break down. Westerly winds and the possibility of rain on Monday should make this a much more pleasant week.
I keep wondering though. We moved here for the temperate climate. Marsha didn't like the hot Minnesota summers, and I had had enough of the snowy Minnesota winters. So what have we had this year? Snow for several months last winter, and weird, hot, smoggy winter this summer. I'd like to find that mythical place. You know the one where it's 20 degrees C all the time and only rains at night (Unless of course there is something interesting going on astronomically speaking in which case it would just skip that night and stay clear).
One high point this week has been my new contact lenses. I've been wearing them for a couple of weeks now and they are wonderful. I went in on Saturday and had him tweak the prescription slightly and then placed an order for 6 months of lenses (they are monthly disposable soft lenses). They should be here in about a week. The most impressive thing about them? I was working at Pacific Shores one day, came around the side of the building and walked into the cloud of dust from someone using a leaf blower to clean out one of the parking lots. It was all sorts of nasty dust and fragments. I tried to shield my eyes and got out of it as quick as I could. Now with the old hard lenses I would have had to pull them and wash them off. These new ones picked up dust, but once I got clear of the cloud and blinked a few times they were clean. That was cool.
Saturday we hit the Farmers Market. Last week and this we have been able to get fresh early season lettuce and turnips. Next week the weekly produce deliveries start. We're really looking forward to that.
Last weekend we moved my office out of the back bedroom and put it in the living room at the front of the house. This was for a couple of reasons. First the back bedroom was feeling a bit cramped and claustrophobic. Secondly we do actually need a guest room for all our friends who are planning to visit. Well, this week in the new locations was great. I have more room to spread out. The light is better, and the ventilation is better. The room does warm up in the afternoon, but that's just this week. Most of the year it will be fine.
Did anyone else see the CBS Sunday Morning story on Tim Horton's this morning? Tim's is a real institution here in Canada. A problem with the Tim's Roll Up The Rim contest was national news a couple of months ago. Tim's is credited with single handedly making Canada the #1 per capita consumer of donuts in the world. Tim's sells something like 6 out of 7 cups of coffee sold in Canada. TimBits are known by everyone. One of the nationwide comedy programs has a reoccurring sketch of a group of people sitting around discussing politics, in a Tim Hortons. Tim Horton's even opened a store in Kandahar, Afghanistan so the Canadian Forces there would have a bit of home. I don't think there is anything comparable in the US.
That's it for this week.
D&M
As I mentioned before it has been hot this week. An unusual continental high has formed and gotten stuck over Alberta. This has reversed the normal wind patterns so that instead of clean and cool westerly wind off of the Pacific the wind is blowing from the east bringing the heat from the prairies. Nearly every day it has topped out over 30. The AC in one of the server rooms failed and we had to scuttle around getting a replacement unit, which was rather hard to find. Most places were sold out. Between the heat, the ozone from the heat, and the smoke from several large forest fires up near the BC-Yukon border the air quality has not been that great. It looks like the block has started to break down. Westerly winds and the possibility of rain on Monday should make this a much more pleasant week.
I keep wondering though. We moved here for the temperate climate. Marsha didn't like the hot Minnesota summers, and I had had enough of the snowy Minnesota winters. So what have we had this year? Snow for several months last winter, and weird, hot, smoggy winter this summer. I'd like to find that mythical place. You know the one where it's 20 degrees C all the time and only rains at night (Unless of course there is something interesting going on astronomically speaking in which case it would just skip that night and stay clear).
One high point this week has been my new contact lenses. I've been wearing them for a couple of weeks now and they are wonderful. I went in on Saturday and had him tweak the prescription slightly and then placed an order for 6 months of lenses (they are monthly disposable soft lenses). They should be here in about a week. The most impressive thing about them? I was working at Pacific Shores one day, came around the side of the building and walked into the cloud of dust from someone using a leaf blower to clean out one of the parking lots. It was all sorts of nasty dust and fragments. I tried to shield my eyes and got out of it as quick as I could. Now with the old hard lenses I would have had to pull them and wash them off. These new ones picked up dust, but once I got clear of the cloud and blinked a few times they were clean. That was cool.
Saturday we hit the Farmers Market. Last week and this we have been able to get fresh early season lettuce and turnips. Next week the weekly produce deliveries start. We're really looking forward to that.
Last weekend we moved my office out of the back bedroom and put it in the living room at the front of the house. This was for a couple of reasons. First the back bedroom was feeling a bit cramped and claustrophobic. Secondly we do actually need a guest room for all our friends who are planning to visit. Well, this week in the new locations was great. I have more room to spread out. The light is better, and the ventilation is better. The room does warm up in the afternoon, but that's just this week. Most of the year it will be fine.
Did anyone else see the CBS Sunday Morning story on Tim Horton's this morning? Tim's is a real institution here in Canada. A problem with the Tim's Roll Up The Rim contest was national news a couple of months ago. Tim's is credited with single handedly making Canada the #1 per capita consumer of donuts in the world. Tim's sells something like 6 out of 7 cups of coffee sold in Canada. TimBits are known by everyone. One of the nationwide comedy programs has a reoccurring sketch of a group of people sitting around discussing politics, in a Tim Hortons. Tim Horton's even opened a store in Kandahar, Afghanistan so the Canadian Forces there would have a bit of home. I don't think there is anything comparable in the US.
That's it for this week.
D&M