Hard To Love

Turner: "I guess if, in a week, the people running Alberta wanted to demonstrate what a bunch of short-sighted small-minded cowards they are [I'll add bullshit money-grubbing, me], these stories would do so nicely."

Demonstration #1:
EnCana's new Bow Building initially lauded as an environmentally designed, community-integrated wonder, now a toothless shell without many of the design features that sold Calgarians on the project in the first place. Via the Globe & Mail.

Demonstration #2:
Alberta's premier and his cabinet just decided to award themselves - without public debate - a 30% salary increase. Via Vue Weekly.

It's bittersweet to be in Melbourne this week. Melbourne, with its public art, amazing public transport infrastructure, public washrooms every 100m, was apparently a boring, empty-downtown'd backwater with a ton of unrealized potential only as recently as the mid-1990s. Then they decided to do things right.

Categories: Calgary | Wurldliness

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New photos on Flickr

Fambily at Sloane's favourite spot in Melbourne: Round three on the ferris wheel!


Climbing! Mount! Mamaaaaaaaa!

More photos now up on Flickr, here.

Categories: Wurldliness

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Next set of Melbourne photos

Our next set of photos is up on Flickr, here. They feature the Werribee open range zoo west of Melbourne, and other city sights. Most are kinda burned out in the highlights, or too dark, or unfocussed. We're still jetlagging, and the time to set light and/or post-edit is basically zero, so they is what they is.

Sloane and I haven't seen much of Turner, but I hear he's knocking 'em dead on the intellectual innovation lecture circuit. Go T!

Categories: Wurldliness

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Arrival Fotoset

First photoset from this trip is now up on Flickr, here.

Categories: Wurldliness

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Melbourne!

Well, I didn't believe it was actually going to happen until we actually landed in Melbourne. But we're in Australia, and we're here for five weeks. Turner's a featured speaker at the Deakin Lectures here for the next ten days, so our first leg has us ensconced at the lovely Grand Mercure Docklands just south of downtown. This is the view from our balcony:



That's the Telstra Dome, where we're seeing the footy on Friday with Garry, our Australian neighbour from Ramsay (who also happens to be in Melbourne this month).

This is the man who picked us up at the airport in a fancy car (note fancy sign bearing Turner's name):



This is Sloaner, jetlaggingly baffled by the weird Australian playground equipment design:




And in case you're in town, here's the program schedule for the lecture series, much of which takes place at Foundation Square right smack in the CBD. Come on down you lucky people! Turner's first talk is tonight in the rural community of Shepparton, and he's on hand in Ballarat for the opening gala on Wednesday. Thursday he's speaking at Foundation Square here in Melbourne, etcetera etcetera. See you there!

Categories: Turner | Wurldliness

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Gogol

And I'll say right now that when I was at Queen's I took a full-year course in Russian Literature in English. No Russian language training required, mind.

Kal Penn's character in The Namesake, talking about Calcutta rickshaws, running alongside his mom and sister in the seats, who are imploring him to shift over and come join them:

"No, you know... Because, like, being pulled by another human being is feudal, and exploitative, and... I don't want to be part of something like that."

Oh Kal Penn. Oh, we've all been there, princess. A few years of undergrad and it's all kinds of brutal to make the people work FOR you in the "third world".

Kal, you may have been cute when you were confined to the Toronto suburbs to film Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, but let me tell you this: if you have 2.5 tonnes of luggage as the average traveller does, and you need to go even 600m to the train station at, say, 6am (as Turner and I might have needed to have done, per se), and there's no such thing as a motorized vehicle to help you, you BET you'll take the emaciated man and his cycle-rickshaw to help you make your non-refundable booking on time.

No questions asked, and all that socialism training out the window, too.

Categories: Ash | India | Wurldliness

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Camden

On watching the fated Japan - Argentina game, armed with the only silk-poured Guinness I've ever had in my life, in an old Camden pub in London, June 1998:

I love the tawny ripeness of these ancient London wood floors; lacquered, bumped and holding the shape of heavy heels, books and plates' corners (knocked off tables), the shuffle of chairs. They're all left behind as grooves, in subtle snailtrail dents, living orange where it meets gold-brown, and between, the deep dark knots like fists within the wood.

And when Japan was clearly starting to lose - badly - the front-toothless man to my left: "Aw, an' yew wer' rilly goin' fer them, wer'ntcha!" (Commisserating tone, this.) ...I have to admit, yes, I had been cheering for Japan, the underdogs.

Categories: Ash | Wurldliness

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