The shortlist of my favourite blog comments for the year is down to 33 entries, and as soon as I've managed to whittle it down to 12, we will be ready for a vote!
I had a blast reading through all the archives. I really do have amazing commenters, and I'm very proud of this community of clever, insightful, and very very funny people. Many, many thanks to everyone who's read and commented - you are the reason I love blogging so much! Making the final cut is going to be very difficult indeed - not to mention the fact that any comments made this week will also count, so there could be a late flurry of even more contenders...
Anyway, before announcing the final 12 contenders for the readers' vote, I've introduced a couple of extra prizes this year! I've tallied up the comments and posts of the week, to see who was the most prolific in each category, and the results are below.
The winner of each category gets a $20 (Canadian) Amazon gift certificate, as well as 2010 Bragging Rights (Quantitative)!
Drumroll please...
Most "Comment of the Week" wins:
Yay, Chall! Many congratulations!
Most "Post of the Week" wins:
And it's an extra Chanukah present for Cromercrox! Woohoo!
Chall and Cromercrox, please email me at vwxynot at gmail and we'll sort out your prizes!
And, to make sure I honour everyone who won bragging rights this year, the other winners (who I couldn't include above without making the charts look ridiculous) were as follows:
Comments of the week: Cromercrox, DuWayne, EcoGeoFemme, Lisbeth, Pika, Professor in Training, RPS77 and Ruchi featured twice each;
Amanda@LadyScientist, Ambivalent Academic, Bean-Mom, Biocheme Belle, DrugMonkey, Elizabeth, GrrlScientist, HGG, MadHatter, Mel, Nat Blair, Natalie, Pawl Bearing, Prof-like Substance, ScienceGirl, Silver Fox, Sonja and Unbalanced Reaction featured once each.
(I can reveal that three people from this list have made the shortlist of the top 33 comments!)
Posts of the week: Alyssa, Anthony Fejes, Austin Elliott, Eva Amsen, Jeanne Sather, Masks of Eris, Microbiologist XX, Pika, ScientistMother, Steffi Suhr, Stephen Curry, StyleyGeek, Thomas Joseph and Toaster Sunshine each had two posts make the cut;
Amanda@LadyScientist, Ambivalent Academic, Bean-Mom, Carlyn Zwarenstein, Caroline Sober, Digital Cuttlefish, DrugMonkey, EcoGeoFemme, Elizabeth Moritz, Frank Norman, GrrlScientist, Jim Caryl, Joseph Lewis, Linda Lin, MadHatter, Makita, MissPrism, PZ Myers, Raf Aerts, Richard Grant, Ruchi, Sara Fletcher, Scicurious, Uphill Down Dale, Viktor Poor and Vishal Kalel had one post in BRC this year.
Again, many thanks to everyone who's read, commented, and/or posted this year. You're all winners!
It's been about 18 months since I made my first forays into the world of podcasts, and I am officially hooked! Thanks to some excellent suggestions in the comments of my last podcast post, some recommendations from my hilarious new sister-in-law, and some finds I've made on my own, I have more podcasts than I have time to listen to, and I love it! I listen to music podcasts all day at work, and spoken word while I'm getting ready in the morning, stretching, exercising (it happens occasionally), cooking, cleaning, and when I'm on the bus or SkyTrain.
There have been a couple of times recently when a friend (most recently Alyssa) has asked for new music recommendations, and I've referred them to podcasts rather than bands. This is how I find most of my new music now - if I like something I hear on a podcast, I write it down (sometimes rather cryptically) and look it up on iTunes later. (Given that I listen to a lot of unsigned band podcasts the songs I like aren't always available in the store, but I'll try again every few months). So I thought I'd list my favourite podcasts here for easy reference! I'm still listening to all the podcasts I mentioned last time, but for this post I'll focus on the new stuff.
I'm too lazy to find all the links, but I'm sure my readers are perfectly capable of looking things up in iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts from!
My favourite podcast in each category is in blue.
Music - single song podcasts
Current Song of the Day - Minnesota Public Radio
Indiefeed - I subscribe to the Alternative/Modern Rock, Blues, Dance, Electronica, Hip Hop and Indie Pop channels. I <3 Indiefeed!
Bands Under the Radar - excellent tunes, but the length (~2 hours) can sometimes be a bit much.
CBC Radio 3 - an online-only radio station that plays exclusively Canadian music, all genres, live and studio recorded. I subscribe to the combined feed to get all their podcasts. There's so much more to Canadian music than Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Nickelback and Justin Bieber!
Coverville - a new find. The shows alternate between sets of covers of / by a specific artist, and "who did it better?" episodes featuring two or three versions of the same song by different artists, with an online poll so you can vote for your favourite.
Mad Decent Worldwide Radio - more uptempo and clubby than anything else I listen to. Good for a late afternoon energy boost.
NPR: Live Concerts - great if you like the band they're featuring, but some of the longer live shows can be a drag if you're not into the band; I end up skipping about a third of them. They also have a habit of not updating for ages and then dumping eight 90 minute shows into the feed at once, which causes problems for those of us with limited space on our 8GB iPhones!
The Sound Culture - again more clubby than the others, but less so than Mad Decent. I really like this one.
Triple J: New Unearthed Music - unsigned Aussie bands. (Recommended by Professor in Training and Mermaid)
Music - Blues
At one point I downloaded the entire back catalogue of the Indiefeed Blues podcast, and listened to ten tracks a day for a couple of weeks. I quickly realised that blues is the perfect music to work to; I don't know why, but something just gels. True aficionados will be horrified by this, but the specific band or song don't seem to matter - the whole genre works for me!
BluzNdaBlood
Friday Night Blues - a bit more high energy than the others.
Murphy's Saloon - the host sounds grumpy is a prince among men, the soul of patience, and tells a bad joke on each episode, but and the music's great :) <-- see comments :)
Nothing but the Blues - the only UK-based blues podcast on my list, although the tracks are international, and the only one that plays some old (sometimes really, really old) recordings mixed in with the more modern stuff.
Texas Blues Cafe
Moving on to spoken word...
Canadiana
The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos (video) - George (aka Canada's Boyfriend) is a Canadian institution, but you don't have to be Canadian to appreciate the sheer awesomeness of his guests. Current episodes on my phone include Slash, Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, and (d'oh!) Nickelback. The interviews are always interesting!
Today in Canadian History - daily short (~8 minute) snippets about recent and (relatively) ancient history - everything from Captain Vancouver's voyages up the west coast to sport to politics to space exploration. The shows feature interviews with some very interesting people (an astronaut today!) including academics, politicians, and lots of others.
Vinyl Cafe Stories - OMG I LOVE this show! The host, Stuart McLean, has a true gift as a story teller and as someone who can find extraordinary pleasure in the most ordinary things. He once spent ten minutes praising mandarin oranges and it was fantastic. It took me a little while to get into the stories he tells of a fictitious family - you have to get to know the characters - but it's been totally worth it. Sometimes very, very funny, sometimes very, very sad, but you always get a lovely warm-and-fuzzy feeling. The live shows also feature music and readers' own stories. My all-time favourite podcast. (Recommended by Alyssa and Wayfarer Scientista. Thank you!)
Comedy
The Moth - live recordings of people standing up and telling a true story from their life, without notes. Not all of the stories are funny, but almost all of them are interesting and well worth listening to.
NPR: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - comedy news quiz. Great stuff, especially once you get to know the panellists! (Recommended by EcoGeoFemme)
Zeitgeist (video) - short snippets of silly news stories presented by a host with a really dry sense of humour.
News/current events/other
The bike podcast - from the Guardian. UK-oriented, but great listening for all the cyclists (recreational, race, and/or commuter) out there.
From Our Own Correspondent - from the BBC. Each episode features several short reports on current events (or just cultural observations) from foreign correspondents based all over the world, mostly serious but with one more light-hearted story at the end. Extremely high quality journalism.
Savage Love - I LOVE Dan Savage, having been introduced to his weekly column (syndicated in our awesome free weekly indie paper, the Georgia Straight) by a labmate during my first month in Vancouver. This show is not for the squeamish as some of the sexual problems people call in with are rather weird and wonderful, but his advice is (usually) great and I think he's really doing some important work on this podcast and in his column. Check out his "it gets better" video campaign, which aims to bring hope to gay teens being bullied at school by describing to them the life as happy, well adjusted gay adults that they can't imagine having for themselves while stuck in small-town high school life.
This American Life - two or three stories on a given theme per episode. Again, the quality of the journalism is great and they find some amazing stories. Sometimes funny, mostly serious. (Recommended by Wayfarer Scientista and EcoGeoFemme)
WNYC's Radiolab - similar to This American Life, but with scientific themes. The shows are really well done and appeal strongly to me (a scientist) and Mr E Man (not a scientist, but interested in Stuff In General). THIS is how you bring science to the public!
Great, now the next time anyone asks for new music recommendations, I can just give them a link! And if anyone has any new suggestions, bring it on! Maybe I can do a Part III in another 18 months.
I might review my favourite iPhone apps (mostly games) next, if anyone's interested!
(Well, except for the bits that actually were downhill. But some of those bits were really hard, too).
But let's start at the beginning...
(BTW this is a really long post. And those of you who donated will have already received an abbreviated version by email, edited and sanitised for the sake of my parents and assorted other relatives. So feel free to skip to the video at the end).
DAY ONE
My friends showed up at my house at 5:30 am on Saturday, put my bike on their bike rack, and drove me to the start of the ride in Surrey, just outside Vancouver. As we got closer we saw more and more cars with bikes on them, and by the time we reached the parking lot, there must have been several hundred thousand dollars worth of bike within sight. We loaded our bags onto a truck, ate a little food, covered ourselves in Chamois Butt'r, and tried to find constructive uses for all our nervous energy. In my case this mostly meant chattering like a monkey and checking that I had my passport about once every five minutes as we waited for the 7:00 am opening ceremonies. The crowds built up around us, and after the arrival of some Mounties carrying a Canadian flag and the singing of O Canada, we learned from the first speaker that there were more than 2,200 riders, and that between us we'd already raised more than 9.2 million dollars!*
The speeches were short and to the point (although a little bit too Bravehearty for my taste in parts - there was a bagpipe sound track and everything), and off we went! It was a slow and wobbly start as 2,200 riders tried to squeeze through the official start gate, but we were soon pedalling smoothly on the closed-off roads (with the exception of the poor soul I saw fixing a puncture within ten minutes of the start). As expected, I lost my faster, fitter, better-bike-owning friends (who were sprinting for the border to avoid the line-ups) within a couple of minutes, but I was happy enough to go at my own pace and enjoy the atmosphere as riders chatted to each other and supporters waved signs and cheered and rang cow bells and blew vuvuzelas from the side of the road.
The first 28 km to the border went by quickly, although the head wind that hit us on a nice long gentle down hill section was a bit of a bugger; I hate that disconnect where your eyes and brain go "wheeeeee! Down hill! Yay! Let's go!", but your legs go "whyyyyyyy is this sooooooo haaaaaaard????". I also quickly realised that I had omitted something crucial from my training: steep downhill rides! I grew up in an extremely flat place and literally never went up or down a hill on a bike until I was 22. Steepness and speed are very scary things for me, especially when surrounded and being passed by so many other people (almost all of my training was done solo).
The border itself was the only organisational weak spot on the whole ride. People like my friends who got there early went straight through, but by the time I got there the official queue area was full, and people were forming a wide, ragged, and basically stationary line behind the official area. I stood in this line for over 15 minutes before the DJ announced that anyone not already in the official queue area was supposed to have been given a coloured sticker, and they'd call everyone up by colour so we didn't have to stand in line for so long. It then took me 5 minutes to find someone giving out stickers (pink). As I was sitting down 15-20 minutes later, I saw someone else handing out red and orange stickers; those were the first colours called, with pink following quite a bit later. The DJ's tune choices didn't help much - as he played "Born in the USA", people around me started singing "We're not in the USA, not in the USA", and the follow up ("Highway to the Danger Zone") was an even worse choice. At least it was sunny, with lots of food and drink on offer! Once I was in the official line it moved quite quickly and I was through and into Washington State with a minimum of fuss. And waiting so long at the border left me with fresh legs for the remaining 101 km of the first day.
The next bit of the ride was gorgeous - so much nicer than blazing down the I5 like we usually do when we drive to Seattle. It turns out that Blaine is a really nice little town, and lots of the locals came out to cheer us on. We then went through a gorgeous State park by the ocean, and through some really pretty countryside, although the head wind came back with a vengeance at times. The first real hill of the day was in Bellingham, but it wasn't any worse than any of my training hills, and there were lots of stops at red lights that offered short recovery periods. Once through the town there was a very gradual but very, very long hill up to the lake where we had lunch - again, that disconnect between your brain seeing a nice flat road and your legs dying a slow death on the hill! As I said to a fellow rider, "this hill sucks. If you're going to be a hard hill to climb, you could at least have the decency to actually look like a hill. This hill is just mean". (This may have been the beginning of the "incoherent ramblings" stage that lasted for most of the rest of the ride).
Sitting down at lunch time was niiiiice. The lakeside setting was lovely, and the lunch was tasty and full of carbs. There was another section of the long gradual hill immediately after lunch - not fun on a full stomach - but that was essentially the end of the climbing for the day.
The probable shooting incident happened with about 35 km still to go. We'd just passed an interesting section of road, featuring a gun range and a huge speedway with hundreds of people camping by the side of the road, and I was essentially riding by myself** down a hill being a bit wussy and scared by the steepness and the speed. There were quite a few vehicles on the road, and many of them weren't giving us much space (it was one of the few sections of road with no shoulder or bike lane at all), so I wasn't entirely happy to hear another one approaching from behind. Then, just before the vehicle entered my field of vision, there was an almighty sharp BANG!!!!!!!. I was startled and jumped a bit, but didn't lose control of my bike, and the vehicle (a gunmetal grey pickup with no license plate on the back) came blazing past me. I didn't see the source of the noise, but my first thought was "OMG GUN!!!!", because that's totally what it sounded like. I was already thinking "or maybe his engine backfired, although that's really unlikely when going down a big hill, or maybe he did it on purpose, although I don't even know if that's possible, or maybe..." when another cyclist came up alongside me from behind. She said "oh my god OH MY GOD, are you OK???!!!" I said that I was, and she said "that was REALLY. FUCKING. SCARY", but then she rode off ahead of me before I could ask her what she'd seen that had freaked her out so much.
I still wasn't sure what had happened, but then at camp that night a colleague told me that he'd seen someone at the gun range testing out a scope on a rifle by looking down it at a long line of riders in a really scary way. And then - the clincher - a volunteer who'd been riding one of the escort motorbikes told me the next morning that another rider had been hit with a pellet gun on the same stretch of road, and they'd had various reports of guns seen and shots fired (from vehicles and from the side of the road). So I think someone almost certainly fired a gun, either at me or into the air behind me. Either that or they launched a firework at me, although I didn't smell a firework, and that's hardly any better than being shot at, anyway. Several drivers on this section of road also apparently shouted "GO HOME!" (or ruder variations thereof) at riders and volunteers. Nice, eh?
Given that I wasn't sure what had happened at the time, I actually wasn't that traumatised. There was an incident towards the end of the next day that scared me much, much more - coming down a steep hill in the rain and needing to make a left turn off the main road halfway down the hill, I got totally freaked out by my speed and hit my brakes quite hard. I was freezing cold and exhausted at this point and not making terribly good decisions, so I didn't think to look behind me before I braked, and the car behind me (that I hadn't heard) almost hit me - there was a screeching of brakes and tyres and a swerve and a lingering smell of burning rubber. Mostly my fault (I'm really sorry, dude, whoever you are - I'm sure I scared the bejeezus out of you), although I'd say he/she was maybe a little too close behind me (again, no shoulder or bike lane). I had to pull off the road and wait a few minutes before I could calm down enough to continue.
Anyway, I'm still supposed to be describing day one. After surviving the putative shooting incident there were a couple more downhill sections and then the rest of the ride was flat. It was painful, though, and not helped by what I'm sure was some inaccurate distance marking. I seemed to get from the 110 km to the 120 km mark really quickly, but then the final (alleged) 9 km into camp took for-bloody-ever. I think the 120 km distance sign was accidentally put up at around the 115 km mark, and a few other riders I talked to agreed, because the last hour was just awful. The road was also quite rough in texture, which didn't help the sore hands, wrists, and other parts, and the added friction made us pedal harder than if we were on a smooth road. This part of the ride was purely about survival, and I have to say that when I finally turned the last corner just before 4:00 pm and saw the Mount Vernon camp site and the welcoming committee of cheering volunteers, I almost cried with gratitude!
CAMP
Camp was great! I grabbed my bag, set up my sleeping gear, had a lovely lovely hot shower, found my friends, ate some tasty if slightly lukewarm food, and drank some free beer. I ran into a few other people I know, and got one of my colleagues to do a bit to camera about how the money from the ride benefits his research (see video at the end of the post). I love how PIs can snap into this mode at a moment's notice, and then snap straight back into "normal guy drinking beer and shooting the breeze" mode just as quickly. It was great to get everyone else's perspective on the ride (and, if I'm honest, nice to see so many people arriving well after me. I'd been worried about being one of the slowest riders after seeing all the amazing bikes people had, and indeed most of my friends and colleagues finished 2-3 hours ahead of me on both days, but I passed loads of people on some really high-end bikes, while people on fat tyre mountain bikes passed me several times).
There were speeches, clips of the day's media coverage, and then two bands - the first one good, the second one fabulous. We went off to bed at 9:30 pm, looking forward to a really good sleep before the second day's ride.
Unfortunately...
Some idiots decided that the best way to prepare for the second day was to get wasted and whoop and holler and run around. It went on for ages. The security guards were trying to make them go to bed, but they were unsuccessful, and the sounds of rowdiness carried all over the campsite. I hate that maybe 5 or 6 people got to decide that hundreds of other people shouldn't get any sleep; this has happened at every music festival I've ever been to, but I really wasn't expecting it on the ride. However, I love that some of them apparently ended up throwing up and passing out drunk - ride 120 km on THAT, mofos! (I'm assuming they were riders. If they were non-riding volunteers, I'm even more pissed off that they kept everyone up). They finally shut up at around midnight... just in time for a train to come by the camp site, blowing its horn for what seemed like full minutes at a time. At this point the only people getting any sleep at all were the loudest snorers in camp; my tent mate and I were awake almost all night, getting maybe an hour of sleep, two max, in short ten minute bursts, until another train came through at 4:45 am and everyone around us apparently said "screw it" and started talking and rustling their bags as they got up and started packing.
The early start had its benefits, though - we were pretty much first in line for the excellent cooked breakfast (although the coffee sucked and the tea was barely even yellow after steeping the bag for two minutes - hotter water next time, please, guys!). By the time we'd put our bags back on the truck and gone to retrieve our bikes, the line was huuuuge and hundreds of people were still waiting for breakfast when we were allowed to start riding shortly after 7:00 am.
DAY TWO
Once again we started the day in a town, with the roads closed by the police and people riding four or more abreast. In contrast to the previous day's sun and cloud mix, we started with a fine misty drizzle that didn't even warrant a waterproof jacket and actually felt quite refreshing. I was amused to see a humongous queue of riders at the first coffee stand we passed - apparently lots of other people were unimpressed by the caffeinated options at camp!
The route was nicer this second day, with much of it on off-road bike trails through the woods. It was heavenly to be away from the traffic; this relief completely mitigated the increasingly heavy rain fall...
... at least for a while.
By the time I got to lunch I was soaked to the skin and freezing cold. I'd put on my waterproof jacket as soon as the drizzle turned to rain, but the elements defeated anything that I (or any of the other riders) could throw at them. There was some cover at the lunch site, but it was all taken up by other soaked riders, so I sat on a cold, wet, wooden bench and ate my cold lunch and drank my cold drinks out in the open, with my sandwich getting more and more soggy with rain. I was shivering at this point, and would have given anything for a hot (or even a warm) drink - but there was only water and Gatorade. I got out of there as fast as I could, only noticing as I left the lunch site that they were handing out those metallic emergency blankets you see at the end of marathons. Too late for me, I was on my way and didn't want to stop moving!
Now, I'd been told at camp by several people (including someone who shall remain nameless but who one would expect to have accurate inside information) that there were "no hills after lunch!!! Downhill all the way!!!". When I got onto the first hill after lunch I was so grateful for the (relative) warmth provided by the extra exertion that I didn't think much of it...
...but then the hill just did.
not.
stop.
It was hard. Really hard. Really, really, hard. We'd seen hardly any supporters that day, just one or two people honking horns or waving from cars, and the one group who did brave the rain to stand and wave signs and cheer us on literally had me in tears of gratitude. I was miserable. I kept thinking of why I was doing the ride, and reminding myself that whatever I was feeling was nowhere near as bad as the cancer treatments my friends and relatives have been through. This helped - quite a lot, actually - but I was still suffering.
This part is all a bit of a blur; long slogs up hills, occasionally steep enough to force me off my bike for a few hundred metres of walking, followed by short and terrifying downhill sections (this is where I made the aforementioned mistake and almost got hit by a car), followed by turning corners to see yet another massive climb ahead. My phone rang a couple of times during this stage, but I knew I couldn't get to it in time to answer, and that I couldn't pick up my voicemail or even see who was calling without turning on the prohibitively expensive data roaming option; this only served to piss me off more. I followed Mermaid's advice of eating something if I started to feel pissed off, but it really didn't help at all (and this was within an hour of eating lunch), and I started to think that exhaustion / hypothermia / near-death experiences / PMS were viable alternative hypotheses.
At one point, turning yet another bloody corner to see yet another bloody hill, I said loudly "OH FUCK. RIGHT. OFF, you bastard hill", and the rider ahead of me started giggling. This really seemed to lift my mood, and everything after that point seemed easier to deal with, even though the long climbs and steep terrifying descents and pouring rain were much the same as before.
At the final pit stop, I called Mr E Man and my good friend from high school who lives close to the end of the ride. Hearing their voices was an amazing boost to my spirits, even though my friend said she wouldn't be able to see me cross the line because her baby was just starting his nap. I learned that my friends had finished the ride and that one of them was waiting for me with his wife and baby Morgan, and that there was beer and hot food and dry clothes, with only 15 km of very pleasant, flat, smooth, off-road riverside bike trail standing in my way. At this point it stopped raining and I jumped on my bike for the final time, still soaked, still freezing, but no longer miserable!
The last section was a pure pleasure. Everyone was so excited to be near the end, and there was much chatter and laughter and discussion of whether we should have a beer first or a hot drink first. And then, at about 2:45 pm, I saw a sign for Marymoor park - the end of the ride - 1.5 miles away! The joy! The euphoria! The hooting and hollering among the riders!
There were people lining the whole of the rest of the route, cheering and yelling and waving signs. Coming into the park, I could hear the music and the announcer... getting louder and louder... and then I turned the final corner and saw a field full of people... and then I was in a muddy field and crossing the line and people on my right were yelling "CATH! CATH! CATH!"
I have honestly never been so happy in my life to see my husband and friends. I'll spare you the over-emotional details, but there were hugs and tears aplenty, and not just from me.
The beer was so delicious. The food was so yummy. And the atmosphere was so amazing. But we were soooo cold (you'll see me moving from side to side in the video below - I didn't need the loo, I was just trying to generate some warmth and also stretch my muscles out a bit). When we got to our nearby hotel I had a long hot shower, but as soon as I got out, I started shivering again. So I got in the hot tub, but when I got out after 5 minutes to go and grab my camera, I started shivering again. I didn't feel properly warm for about another half hour, but by that time I'd had a couple of beers and was incredibly happy, so it didn't really seem to matter all that much any more. And then I got to have dinner with my hubby, my Vancouver friends, and my high school friend! And then fall asleep about ten minutes after we got back to our room!
Muscle-wise, I felt better than I'd expected. Much better, actually. My quads were pretty tight, but I was fine as long as I kept moving. Stopping was bad, though - I could barely get out of my chair after dinner on Sunday, and the next day was rather painful, especially when I first got up and then again when I got out of the car after the drive home. (It was depressing how quickly we blasted through all the landmarks from the ride - the lunch site, the campsite, the first day's lunch site, the border. It's really not far at all in a car!). Back home, I woke up at about 4 am on Tuesday with all kinds of weird back spasms going on, but that problem fixed itself with an almighty CLICK during a meeting later that day, and on Thursday morning I was back on my bike. My regular commute felt so short, and I stormed up the hills like they weren't even there - but where were all the people cheering me on, and welcoming me into the bike room with signs and pom poms and vuvuzelas?!
My arse still hurts a bit, but that'll pass soon enough.
Overall, it was an amazingly positive experience. I'm immensely glad I did it***, and I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who donated and/or supported me in any other way.
I maded you guys a video! (With some beer in it!)
And then I drinked it! (The beer, not the video!)
THANK YOU, EVERYONE!
YOU ROCK!
Video: Part I (I sure wish YouTube would have told me the original all-in-one version was too long before it spent 21 minutes saying "uploading"):
Part II:
-----------
*I got some more donations after the ride started, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one, so the total will be higher by now!
**having just passed one group of cyclists, and on my way to catching up with the next one (yes, I passed people! Quite a lot of people! Although lots of groups were passing me, too). This was my pattern for most of the ride. I think my speed fell somewhere between the average for the recreational riders and the average for the actual good cyclists. Or something
***I'm also immensely glad it's over! It's been hanging over me for months, and the training combined with 7 weeks of hosting friends and family over the last 2.5 months means that I feel like I've had no time to myself, literally since the Olympics. I haven't had time to get a hair cut, or buy new clothes to replace the ones that are literally falling apart on me - I'm a shaggy-headed, scruffy-clothed ragamuffin! But this weekend I get to do whatever I want! Like, watch every single World Cup game! COME ON ENGLAND!!!
When we bought our house (four years ago today!), one of the best things that Mr E Man and I did was to invest in a really good bed. We'd been sleeping on a queen-size futon, and although it was a good fit for our small rented apartment, we decided that our larger space and newly-acquired grown-up status were worthy of a better place to lay our heads. So we found a beautiful cherry-wood bedroom furniture set on Craigslist, including a king-size sleigh bed frame, and bought the best mattress we could afford to go with it. Memory foam pillows and a lovely heavy duvet complete the set, and we both now (usually) sleep better than we ever have before in our adult lives. We like to cuddle up when we first go to bed, and again when we wake up, but we separate to sleep - and in our lovely lovely bed, there's plenty of space for us both to move around and get comfy without ever touching each other!
The problem comes when we go on vacation. We've spoiled ourselves rotten at home, and have a terrible time sleeping in inferior beds. Anything smaller than a king-sized bed has us tossing and turning and fighting for space in an extreeeeeemely mature way ("stop touching me!!!" "I'm not! YOU'RE touching ME!!!"), and back in November The Most Uncomfortable Bed In The World forced us to abandon our otherwise wonderful accommodation in Cienfuegos, and upset our gracious hostess in the process.
Hotel beds are usually fine, but our budget is better suited to B&Bs and friends'/relatives' spare rooms. And so it was on last week's trip. With my parents in tow, we didn't even get the best spare room in each case. We slept on a pull-out sofa bed at my sister-in-law's, an old and not terribly comfortable queen-size bed in the condo we rented in Whistler, and then foam pads on the floor of the computer room at my mother-in-law's. (The latter was actually the most comfortable bed of the three - or at least the one that offered the most space). These inferior beds meant that I got little sleep on our "vacation", typically waking two or three times during the night and waking up for good by 6:30 am at the latest. We always relish sleeping in our own bed for the first time after a trip, but last night's return to home base was particularly welcome.
There was an upside to last week's inferior sleeping arrangements, though: I got to experience two new categories of dreams!
I love dreams. I find them fascinating. Where do they come from? What are they for? (And do my cats' dreams serve the same purpose as my own?) So whole new dream categories are extremely welcome, even if the dreams themselves suck.
Category I: The Boring Dream.
I had Boring Dreams twice on the trip. I can't remember what they were about - because they were really, really boring - but I woke up with a huge sense of relief - "thank God that's over with". This made waking up at 6 am on a vacation day feel much more welcome than it would have done otherwise.
Category II: The PMS Dream.
I woke up (early, of course) one morning to find myself really, really mad at Mr E Man. The reason? Well, you see, he'd been put in prison for something or other, but I knew that he was innocent, and I worked my ass off for six months to prove it. When I finally got him out of jail - having lost my job and several friends in the process - he wanted to see his friends instead of just spending time with me all the time, and I turned into Super Bitch. In my dream, I knew I was hormonal and wasn't being entirely rational or reasonable in my anger, but I couldn't stop myself from escalating the situation, until I ended up screaming at him in front of all his friends - at his prison release celebration party, no less! - and storming off down the street in a dodgy neighbourhood in the middle of the night.
I'm not quite that bad in real life when I have PMS*, but the sense of "oh this is because I'm hormonal but oops I don't seem to be able to stop myself even though I've now realised that I'm overreacting" was uncannily familiar. First time in a dream, though - but not the first time I've stayed mad at someone in the morning after "they" pissed me off in a dream!
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*although I did once storm out of a restaurant in a huff because Mr E Man kept tickling my knee after I'd asked him to stop it - TWICE. I already felt silly by the time I got home, about two minutes later...
The aim of the pool was to choose the country that would get the most medal points per capita. I assigned 3 medal points per gold medal, 2 medal points per silver medal, and 1 medal point per bronze medal. The final medal table is here, I took the population stats from the CIA's World Factbook, and reader picks from these twoposts. Please let me know if you spot any errors or omissions!
Here's the table:
Congratulations, Chall!
Nice work! The Bragging Rights are yours and yours alone, with no need for the tie-breaker (predictions of the numbers of each kind of medal).
And to celebrate, here's a very celebratory video of the downtown Vancouver celebrations that followed Canada's victory in the gold medal hockey game (with a special shoutout to Nina, as requested!).
Watching my sloppy, drunken footage again made me very happy, but also very sad that everything is over now :( Ah well, it was one of the most fun times of my whole life, and I will always remember it fondly. Inspired by Vancouver 2010, I will probably go to London in 2012. I might even go to Sochi in 2014...
Up next: World Cup! Ing-er-land, Ing-erland! There will be a pool, there will be trash talk. My goodness will there be trash talk...
Our second Olympic event was Canada vs. Sweden in the preliminary rounds of the women's hockey, at the UBC Thunderbird Arena. As soon as I announced that I was going to this game, I was CHALLenged to a $20 bet. And so I made a video for one of my favourite commenters...
(not caught on film: Mr E Man almost peeing himself laughing when I walked into that guy, me explaining to that guy that I was making a video for a Swedish friend who'd bet $20 on the outcome of this game, and then that guy laughing and saying "good luck to your friend!")
Chall, I really did feel bad by the end... we all expected a much closer game. By the third period we were rooting for Sweden to get a goal (when they did, they got a good cheer from the whole crowd - the Swedish fans hadn't stopped cheering all game), and the one guy behind us who was attempting to trash talk and mock the Swedes shut up PDQ when no-one else joined in.
"Canada is the powerhouse of women's hockey. They have a coaching staff that is unbelievably good. They have worked with their players since the first of August to achieve another level of women's hockey and it happens every fourth year. Our team is much better than it was in Torino, but unfortunately Canada hasn't stopped developing".
This situation, with Canada and the US so dominant over the rest of the field, really isn't good for the game. I hope the other teams get a chance to catch up over the next four years and make the preliminary rounds a bit more interesting in Sochi.
On the other hand, it is fantastic to see how much support the women's game gets in Canada. I'd been to a couple of women's team games in England (football and field hockey), and expected the crowd in Vancouver to be a similar mix of women, children, and school groups - but really, the makeup of the crowd was very similar to the one at the men's game the day before. There were lots of groups of men (including two guys in full body fluffy bunny outfits, with a sign saying "Canadian puck bunnies"), and the level of support (including chanting, flag waving, sign making, face & body painting, clapping, stomping, and celebrating) was just the same. And there was such a demand for tickets that the semis and medal games will be in the much larger GM / Canada Hockey Place.
Chall, I will hold you to your bet... but would you mind directing the $20 to my fundraising efforts rather than to me? The fundraising campaign is not going quite as well as the Canadian women's quest for gold!
Thanks for playing, and I hope you are taking comfort in the strong showing so far by Sweden's male hockey players!
I don't have kids myself, but over the last few months I've seen two of my best friends become mothers. They're really growing into their new roles, and their daughters are two very lucky little ladies!
One of the most important things I've learned from friends and family about parenting is the importance of teamwork and a united front - at least in front of the children! One pair of in-laws, in particular, have this down to a fine art. They share all the chores, they take it in turns to read the bedtime stories, and their sons know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if one parent says "no", there is absolutely zero point in asking the other.
Now, ScienceGirl obviously has a kick-ass husband who will do his share of the parenting. But not everyone is so lucky... one of my new-mum friends sent me this chain email earlier this week, which made me laugh and makes for a nice virtual baby shower gift!
ScienceGirl, this is for you... and for all the stay-at-home parents (mums AND dads) out there!
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A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pyjamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and 20 wrappers strewn all around the front yard.
The door of his wife's car was open, and so was the front door to the house, and there was no sign of the dog. Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall.
In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing.
In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.
He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened.
He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.
As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife curled up in bed in her pajamas, reading a novel.
She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went.
He looked at her bewildered and asked, 'What happened here today?'
She again smiled and answered, 'You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?'
Right after EcoGeoFemme pointed out that there haven't been many memes circulating recently, Amanda went and tagged me for one! The assignment is to write about seven things that I've never talked about in my blog.
This is a tricky one for me, because like in real life, I talk/blog too much and with too few filters. It's easy enough to find seven things I've never written about, but that aren't meaningful to me: porcupines, ravioli, WWII tank design, the history of ten pin bowling. My other initial reaction was to go too far in the other direction, into TMI territory, but luckily I decided to tone those ideas down (there still might be TMI for some people). So I present to you a mix of subjects I just haven't got around to, and subjects I've tried to blog about before as a full post but couldn't find the right angle, or that otherwise caused a severe case of writer's block.
1) I have a rather impressive scar on the inside of my left arm.
I got it in a rather embarrassingly cliched middle class way, by falling off a pony at a riding lesson when I was seven and breaking my arm just above the elbow. Contrary to everyone's first reaction, the main scar isn't from the bone breaking through the skin (although I do have a much smaller scar from that - just barely visible in the photo, slightly above and to the right of the mole). It's actually from the multiple surgeries I had to have to repair the blood vessels and nerves that the broken bone cut through at the point where they all bunch together at the elbow joint. My arm swelled up after one surgery, bursting a couple of stitches and stretching the scar tissue out, and it stretched further as I grew. I'm lucky to still have my arm at all; during one surgery that was supposed to last a couple of hours but was well into its seventh (my parents were freaking out at this point, as you can imagine), the surgeons discussed amputation as the best option. Luckily, they persevered and saved my arm. I was in traction for two weeks (apparently there's a published case study about how they set up the traction apparatus - I remember them videoing it - but I can't find it in PubMed), and it took a year or so of intensive physio before I could use my hand properly again. It still sometimes spazzes out on me and I lose my grip on whatever I'm holding with no warning: this is good in that it got me out of playing the viola in high school (the position I had to hold my wrist in seemed to aggravate the problem), but bad in that I once dropped an open 2L bottle of conc HCl while doing my undergrad research project, destroying my lab coat and a patch of the flooring. I've never held anything that scary in my left hand since, even though these incidents are much less common than they used to be.
I remember freaking out when I first saw the scar emerge from inside the cast I'd been wearing; it was hideously red and swollen and flaky and gross. I cried. A lot. However, I soon realised that I could use it to scare younger kids and chase them around the playground, and I almost always win "biggest scar" competitions. It's in such a discrete location, and it's faded and flattened so well, that people sometimes know me for years before they notice it, and it's such a normal part of me now that I barely even remember it's there. Also, the position of one of my moles makes it look like a winky smiley face.
Funnily enough, I have two friends with similar scars in the exact same place, following motorbike accidents. Motorbikes are much cooler than ponies.
OK, that one went longer than I'd intended... I'll try to be more concise in the remaining six points!
2) I sometimes have dreams about people I know that make me think about them in a completely different way. Usually just for the next day, but sometimes permanently. These dreams are sometimes the first conscious sign of something going on subconsciously, e.g. that it was time to let one friendship fizzle out, or that a formerly platonic friendship was heading in a new direction that had to be addressed. But other times they're just completely from left field and make me giggle with their weirdness.
There's a episode of Friends where Phoebe finally remembers why she's mad at Ross:
"Oh, come on! Yes... remember that time on the frozen lake? We were playing chess, you said I was boring, and then you took off your energy mask and you were Cameron Diaz! Okay, there's a chance this may have been a dream"
I couldn't find the clip on YouTube, but it sums up the latter category of dream perfectly.
3) Being around my friends' babies has had a complicated effect on me: it's made me feel very secure in my own decision not to have kids, but also made me less scared of an accident. We had a scare just before last summer's baby boom (my previously 100% reliable record of years of 27 day cycles suddenly disappeared with an unprecedented 42 day cycle) and I totally freaked out. We had another scare in November, and I freaked out considerably less. Although there was still some freaking, obviously.
4) I always used to say that if I won the lottery, I'd still want to work. But the older I get, the more I think I'd just want to bum about, living on a boat (summer) and in a ski cabin (winter) and maybe dabbling in a little writing. I think this is the opposite of how you're supposed to change as you get older.
5) I believe in ghosts. Well, I don't not believe in ghosts. I don't believe in the usual way; I don't think there are self-aware / conscious spirits floating around, trying to avenge their own deaths or otherwise deliberately haunting the living because of unresolved issues from their lives. I cycle through the local cemetery in the dark all the time: I aint afraid of no ghost! (Campfire stories are another matter entirely). But too many people I know and trust have told me too many, too convincing stories. There are also too many examples of multiple people seeing the same thing in the same place and/or at the same time.
The most convincing stories are where the person sees a ghost that doesn't interact with them. "This white apparition rose out of a grave and waved at me" doesn't cut it. But the other stories do. For example, my Dad has a story about a fellow student from his hall of residence who died after breaking his neck in a rugby scrum. A few weeks later my Dad was walking past this student's room (which had been emptied and locked up for the year; no-one else wanted to live there), and saw the dead guy open the door, walk out into the corridor, lock his room door behind him, and walk away without acknowledging my Dad, who was standing a few inches away with his mouth wide open. He says it was unmistakably, undeniably, definitely, the dead guy (in the dead guy's clothes). This student definitely did not have a twin or any other similar looking relatives (my Dad knew him well enough to go to the funeral and meet his family).
Now, I'm no physicist, but I do try to read the complicated physics articles in New Scientist, and I know that our understanding of time is incomplete and there are some unresolved problems with the current theories. Is it possible that we might sometimes catch a glimpse of someone or something from the past? That my Dad, and other people I know and trust who have similar stories, somehow watched a play-back of a moment from this guy's life, like watching a video?
I can almost hear Massimo (and any other physicists who read this) laughing at me right now.
Possible alternative explanations:
a) cognitive dissonance
b) my Dad is crazy
c) my Dad has repeatedly lied to me about this experience (I don't think he his. You should see his face when he tells this story).
d) lots of other people are either crazy or lying
e) I'm crazy
f) I've watched too much sci-fi
7) The sad demise of Mad Hatter's blog had really got me thinking. I totally understand her reasons. Don't worry / celebrate, I have no intentions of shutting down my blog. But blogging really is a trigger for wasting lots of time on the internet, time that would be better spent reading, writing, playing my guitar, and hanging with Mr E Man and the kitties. I spend a lot of time reading and commenting on blog posts, and I don't want to stop completely, because I love it. You guys are my friends, and I want to know what you're up to! Also, you can't / shouldn't be a blogger without also contributing to the community by reading and commenting on other people's blogs.
I think the solution (for me) is to try and be more selective. I went through my Google Reader account yesterday and deleted some feeds. I pruned way back to the bare bones, i.e. I unsubscribed from eight blogs (and resubscribed to three of them this morning). It's so hard! There are too many good blogs out there! So I think rather than reading fewer blogs, I need to read fewer posts on each blog. Almost every blog contains a mixture of things I'm really interested in, and things I'm less interested in (speaking of which, I do apologise for the recent flood of posts about Canadian politics. Please bear with me). For example, it's now five years since I last held a pipette, and I really don't have any useful, current advice to contribute to conversations about lab work and related aspects of the grad student / postdoc experience. Similarly, not being a prof or lecturer, I have nothing useful to contribute on posts about teaching methods and such.
So, if you see fewer comments and page hits from me, please forgive me! I'm still skim-reading in Google Reader, but applying more filters to my thorough reading and commenting. And I'll always click through to celebrate your highs and commiserate with your lows.
Unless they're about breaking a pipette while teaching.
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I tag: anyone willing to post their own scar photo!
She's in town on a family trip, and took some time out to meet up with me for some yummy pasta, local wine, decadent chocolate cake, a jazz band playing just for us, and a really fun conversation! As I know I've said before, meeting a blogger is like a first date with an old friend - you know some of their stories and personality, but have to ask basic questions like "so what exactly do you do?"! Anyway, I hope I've inspired Nina to meet up with some more bloggers who live just a leeeeetle bit closer to Freiburg!
And then, on Wednesday...
What's this?
It's part of a mega-cool stage set that barely fit into BC Place, that's what it is:
But who's it for?
U2!!!!!!
I've seen them before, and was very happy to see them again! I agree with some of the local reviews I've read; while I do like the new album (MUCH more than the one before), I would have liked to hear more of their classics. But they have such an immense repertoire that they're never going to be able to play everyone's favourite songs, and all in all it was a great show. I would post my videos, but the camera is blatantly moving to the music in a rather embarrassing manner.
Yes folks, it's another post full of TMI. Especially for the guys. I know that at least one of my readers will be happy, but others among you may wish to go and read something else instead.
Why not join the hockey pool while you're waiting for normal service to resume? You have until 7pm EST today to make your first picks.
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I first read about menstrual cups (specifically the Moon Cup) on an advert posted on the inside of a toilet door in Heathrow airport. I remember the occasion because it made quite the impression; I was in my late teens, and my nose wrinkled with disgust as I read the text. When I came out of the stall, one of the girls I was travelling with said "did you get the same advert as me? GROSS!!!" I had to agree - crazy dirty hippies!
However, I am now well and truly converted. A growing unease about the environmental impact of disposable products, combined with my discovery of green bloggers such as Ruchi, convinced me to look into the Diva Cup a few months ago. It took several posts by Ruchi and other trusted bloggers to get me to the stage of reading the product's testimonials and FAQ pages, and I gradually realised that it wasn't such a scary thing after all. So off to London Drugs I went*, and after reading the instructions very thoroughly, I made the switch.
And I aint going back.
Seriously, it's an amazing, life-changing product. You put it in, and just forget about it for the day. I've never had to empty it more than twice a day, and never at work or while out and about - just once at home before leaving for the day, and then again before bed. I no longer have to worry about having the right number and kind of tampons stashed away at home, at work, and in my various bags. I also don't have to worry about disposing of used tampons in friends' houses or other places with no sani-bins. I can vouch for the safe and comfortable use of the cup while running, cycling, swimming, circuit training, doing yoga, and skiing**. And you know what? No string. On the one occasion that I got caught out without my Diva, I broke out the aforementioned handbag tampon stash, and found the string to be more inconvenient and gross than I'd remembered, and much worse than using the Diva.
It did take a bit of getting used to. The first couple of days were a little uncomfortable, but once I got the hang of inserting and (especially) removing it, I had no other problems. You really do need to read the instructions - there's a right way and a wrong way to put it in. If it doesn't open up fully, it will leak - but luckily I was using back-up that night (I highly recommend doing this until you're comfortable with the cup). I also had a couple of spills while learning how to remove the cup - maybe wait until a lighter day before using it for the first time! I will confess to standing in the bath to remove the cup until I was sure I'd got the hang of it, somewhere near the start of my second cycle.
Is it gross? The first time was... different, but I got used to it very quickly (again, starting to use the cup on a lighter day might help to mitigate that initial reaction!) Now that I'm used to it, (and because I'm such a biology geek), I actually appreciate having a more detailed insight into my cycle, not that there's any real practical benefit to this!
As I mentioned above, it took multiple positive reviews over a period (ha!) of years for me to even consider switching, so I'm not expecting anyone who reads this to go rushing out to the store THIS INSTANT. But I do hope that I can be one influence among many for someone who's already somewhere along that same path.
**Not until Day 3, obviously. Incidentally, the Diva is also fully compatible with moaning, whining, lying on the couch, eating chocolate, and trying to calculate the maximum tolerated dose of ibuprofen.
This was the first meet-up to which I brought a chaperone. After all, that ScientistMother is scary.
KIDDING!
We were actually at a Cafe Scientifique event about the "convenience" barriers that prevent people from choosing more sustainable options (e.g. remembering to bring reusable bags to the store so you don't need to use the plastic ones), and I brought a non-bloggy friend who is very interested in the field. And apparently I was the scary one - after telling ScientistMother that every blogger I'd met so far was just how I'd imagined them, I said "it's too early to tell with you, though" and got a worried look in return. The first laugh of many that night!
After a few more hours, I was able to conclude that ScientistMother is just how I imagined*. Very bright, very passionate, and definitely not afraid to speak out and express her opinions (in a good way! The speaker was being naive/simplistic when he said money was the biggest barrier to getting more people to take transit, and ScientistMother was right that time can be much more of an obstacle. And, true to blog life, once ScientistMother had taken the plunge and become the first person to jump in, others followed, and a better conversation evolved).
Once the event was over, we had an awesome and wide-ranging conversation about science, blogging, the environment, and (of course!) Monkey (soooooooooo cute! Thanks for sharing your photos, ScientistMother!). I hope we'll do it again soon!
I did find it funny that after all this talk of time and money being obstacles to taking transit, ScientistMother dropped me off at a bus stop, and I was more or less immediately handed a transfer ticket (with 50 minutes still on it) by a kind and generous passerby, and then the bus arrived within a minute...
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*Am I just how she imagined? Let's just say that she seemed very surprised that I didn't want to go in on a pitcher (I'd just started my 2nd pint when she arrived!)
(This is a series of posts detailing my personal journey from work permit to Canadian citizenship. I've included as many details as I can remember. If you found this post using an internet search for Canadian immigration, or if you are a regular reader who is interested in moving to Canada, please bear in mind that things may have changed since I went through the system, and your situation may be completely different from my own. Please consult the Canadian government's website for more information.)
Many of my family and friends were astonished to learn that marrying Mr E Man didn't get me automatic Canadian citizenship. In fact, as an existing permanent resident, obtaining a Canadian husband made absolutely no difference at all to my immigration status or timelines. As I mentioned in Part II, marriage (straight, gay, or common law) to a citizen does get non-permanent residents optional access to a faster and cheaper "sponsored" PR application process, but that's it; all PRs who wish to become a citizen apply through the same process, and are subject to the same rules.
As soon as I decided to stay in Canada permanently, I knew I wanted to eventually become a citizen. First and foremost because I love this country and want to be a fully contributing member of its society. That means that I want to vote out the right wing bastards who ru(i)n this country AND this province. People fought long and hard for my right to vote, a right which is sadly granted to so few of the people who live (and have ever lived) on this planet. Besides, if you don't vote, you don't (or at least shouldn't) get to complain about the government... I've voted in every British election for which I've been old enough and resident in the country* - general, local, Scottish, and European parliament elections - and have been incredibly frustrated at not having a say during my seven (and a half) years in Canada.
So that was my primary motivation, but there were others too. For example, I've always wanted a second passport; not only do I now get to avoid the old fingerprint/photograph/interrogation routine that I used to go through at the US border, it's also really fucking cool. A recent rule change was another factor; PR cards are now required in order to enter the country, and the card has to be renewed every five years**, via the same rather frustrating process by which I replaced my stolen card after my honeymoon. So you really may as well apply for citizenship, and just renew your passport instead.
I also get to legitimately support a second team during the Olympics and other sporting events (-> more medals! w00t!).
Permanent residence is the hard part. Once that's in the bag, it's really quite easy to become a citizen. You have to be physically in Canada as a permanent resident for "at least three years (1,095 days) in the past four years before applying". Every day that you spend out of the country counts against you, and has to be accounted for (I used the stamps in my passport and emails I'd sent to my Mum*** to work this out - the single most important piece of advice I can give to an aspiring citizen is to keep excellent records of your travel during this period). You can count time spent in Canada as a non-permanent resident (i.e. on a work permit), but one day with this status only gets you half a day of residency credit, and you can only claim a maximum of one year.
I used the online calculator to pinpoint the exact day on which I would become eligible to apply for citizenship, and completed as much of the paperwork as I could ahead of time. Unlike the behemoth of the PR application package, which took several months to assemble, the citizenship application form is just five pages long. (It's also MUCH cheaper to apply for citizenship than for PR status). I also needed to send photos, and photocopies of my passport, PR documents, marriage certificate, and BC healthcare card. I completed the process, appropriately enough, on Canada Day 2008.
The next step in the process was, of course, the infamous citizenship test. In late 2008 I received the study guide and my test date (8:15am on the day after my birthday, boooooooo). I promptly launched into intensive study put the study guide on a shelf and forgot about it. Massimo and others who'd already taken the test had assured me that it was a piece of cake, no problem at all.
So, when I did crack open the study guide, a couple of weeks before my test, the level of detail took me by surprise. I read through the guide a few times, and then took an (unofficial) online practice test.****
And failed.
I just wasn't prepared for questions about the metals mined from the Canadian shield, or the major industries of Saskatchewan.
Luckily, an email (or two, or three) from Massimo helped to calm me down, as he assured me that the actual test questions would be much easier; more a test of language ability than of knowledge.
And so it proved to be! The test consists of 20 multiple choice questions. You have to get 12 right in total, and you also have to correctly answer two of the three most important questions (the ones about how to vote). There was only one question that I wouldn't have known the answer to without studying, and that one I could probably have guessed. I definitely don't want to put anyone off studying, because it's an interesting and worthwhile thing to do in its own right. And, of course, I benefited greatly from the extensive similarities between the British and Canadian political systems. But really, anyone who pays any attention at all to the news should do OK.
After the test, immigration officials checked the original copies of the documents we'd photocopied and sent in with our applications, and briefly chatted with each person to ensure that we all spoke sufficient English or French. Some people were handed special envelopes and walked out looking perturbed, but I wasn't one of those people, so I can't tell you what that was all about. A few of us speculated that some people were being referred for an additional language test, but I really don't know for sure.
About three months later, I got notification that I'd passed the test. Oh happy day! I was also given my ceremony date; as with the test itself, you're assigned a date and time, and have to apply for permission to change it. I think you can only miss one assigned test date before you get kicked out of the system and have to reapply; if you miss more than one assigned ceremony date, I think you have to appear in front of a citizenship judge in order to be granted citizenship. But luckily this wasn't an issue for me, as I was available on both dates.
You already know all about my ceremony, which was very pleasant and only slightly awkward (luckily no-one else sang the anthem in tune either). And that brings us to the end of my (mostly) smooth dealings with Citizenship and Immigration Canada!
So long, and thanks for all the fish memories!
----------------- Wait, what's that?
You want examples of easy-peasy test questions?
*Sigh*. So demanding.
But, OK.
My favourite question was the first one (on my version - there were at least six different versions distributed around the room, probably to prevent copying). One of the immigration agents gave a short presentation at the beginning of the test, and started off by asking if anyone required the test booklet in French, or if English was OK. The slides he used were in English and French.
Question #1: "What are the two official languages of Canada?"
Apparently, another version asked for the name of the head of state... in a room with a portrait of the Queen proudly displayed on the wall.
Other answer options included "recycling newspapers" as the primary responsibility of Canadian citizens, and "call the police" as the appropriate response to not receiving your voter registration card within a week of an election.
But to see some other examples, you're just gonna have to take the test yourself!
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*I can still vote in the UK as an ex-pat, but I don't think that's right. Especially as I'm a lefty, and therefore likely to vote for tax increases that I wouldn't actually have to pay.
**PR status is still (as the name suggests) permanent, as it always was. But the new cards are not, so if you ever want to leave the country (and get back in), you really need to renew your card. This rule change has finally prompted my mother-in-law to apply for citizenship; I helped her with her application not long after I submitted mine, and discovered that she became a PR in 1960! As my Dad said to her, "well, you don't want to rush into anything". NB she doesn't have to take the test, as she's over the upper age limit, but this does delay her ceremony by a few months.
***She insists on knowing the dates, times, and flight numbers for all my trips, even if I'm not going to the UK. She's a very nervous flyer and has never quite got used to the fact that I fly a couple of times a year.
****There are a few of them out there, but I'm not going to link to them because the bastards freaked me out.
I got to meet another of my favourite bloggers yesterday! (That's three blog meet-ups now, and they've all been great. I highly recommend it).
This time it was Mad Hatter's turn. She's in town for a few days, and had a long enough window in her busy schedule that I got to take her kayaking! It was a very windy day for this time of year, so my promised "leisurely paddle no more than 20 metres from the beach" turned into a solid two hour workout, during which we had to fight to get the boat to turn back towards shore from the middle of the harbour. But despite being a novice kayaker, Mad Hatter paddled like a pro and didn't let the wind or waves phase her. She even claimed to enjoy herself! No eagles out yesterday unfortunately, but we did spot a seal, some cormorants, a tern, and assorted gulls.
Meeting a blogger is a bit of a weird experience, with elements of both a blind date and a catch-up with an old friend. You really can get a decent impression of what someone's like from their blog, and indeed Mad Hatter was much as I expected her to be - smart, funny, and with lots of common ground to talk about! Our animated conversation about blogging, science, pets, and life in general continued after the kayaking, on Vancouver's best patio...
...and the four hours we spent together simply flew by.
Thanks mate! I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay!
Unanswered questions:
How did Massimo guess who I was meeting on his first try?
It wasn't a planned meet-up, but in this relatively small life sciences community, not exactly random either! I shouldn't even be all that surprised that we know some of the same people...
Anyway, it was awesome. We had some beer and a nice chat about science, cycling, Vancouver, and of course blogging. We'll definitely do it again some time - after all, he owes me a pint.
Anyone else living in or visiting Vancouver, and wanting to meet up, let me know! My two experiences so far have both been great!
I do have to say though, that I am increasingly unsure of what to do with these things. I hate to sound in any way ungrateful, because it's always a warm and fuzzy moment when a fellow blogger thinks of me for an award.
So what's my problem?
Well, there are just so many of them that come around... and they all want you to pass on the award to 5, or 7, or 9, other bloggers... so do you continue to award them to your genuine favourites, or do you think "well, I didn't include so-and-so last time, so she can have one this time"? Doesn't that just devalue the whole concept?
So, I am going to bend the rules a little bit, and pass on this award to one blogger, and one blogger only.
I found her blog through a carnival, when I was excited to find a fellow virology geek and promptly clicked through to the original post. Then I read some more posts... and some more... and then the entire archives... and discovered not only a fantastic blog and an awesome blogger, but a fabulous community of commenters that I promptly joined. And who followed me home to my own blog.
That one click was the start of my journey through the looking glass and into the community to which I now belong. I'm going to repeat something I said in a recent comment thread, in case any of you missed it:
"I just want to say how much I value the little community that's built up on this blog. When I first started to read blogs, I always preferred the ones where the commenters seemed to know each other, and talked amongst themselves, not just to the blogger. We seem to be getting there! Thank you all, and keep up the good work ;)"
So thank you, Mad Hatter, for introducing me to the original group of commenters who still drop in here and elsewhere!
And now, the cunning plan... Dude, I miss your blog! It makes me so sad to see it languishing at the bottom of my "most recent posts first" blog roll. And I am not the only one! So please, if you possibly can, pull off the dust cloths and polish the cups and saucers, it's time to restart the tea party!
--------------------- If you agree, and you want Mad Hatter to start blogging again, leave her a comment on this thread... an avalanche of begging, pleading comments can only help! I see some of you have already started - good work!
Crystal from "Chances Are I'm Going To Hell For This" was recently interviewed by her friend - and posted the results on her blog. She also chose to perpetuate the meme by asking for willing interviewvictims subjects in the comments, and I obliged, because I'm egocentric like that. So here are my answers to Crystal's five questions!
1. What/ who influenced you to go in to science?
Good question... I've often thought that I was just plain destined to get into science, because it matches my personality and thinking patterns so well. But there were lots of people who helped me to discover this compatibility.
I got interested in biology through loving cute animals, so I would have to cite James Herriotand David Attenboroughfor sparking that interest. And of course I have to thank my Mum, who watched all the wildlife documentaries with me, and successfully argued with my Dad that we should get a cat.
As my knowledge of biology matured, I became interested in smaller and smaller units of life - from cute lion cubs down to organs, then cells, then finally viruses and genes. I had an amazing biology teacher by the name of Ann(e) La(w/u)rence (sorry Miss, can't remember the spelling!) from the age of 14-18 - I've actually been planning a series of posts about great teachers, and you can bet she'll be in there - who was incredibly animated and enthusiastic about her subject, but especially about genetics and evolution. And once she taught us those things, I stopped searching for smaller and smaller things to investigate, turned 90 degrees, and headed off into an in-depth exploration of genetics. I guess if she hadn't intervened, I might have continued on to chemistry and then subatomic particle physics...
2. What would you do/be (besides science) if money were not important?
I'd be living on a sailboat (summer) and little rustic cabin (winter), travelling around the BC coast and writing a book.
3. How did you know your hubby was "the one"?
(Super-lameness alert).
When we first met, I was halfway through a two-year postdoc / work permit. So when I met this hunky Canadian carpenter at a big group dinner one night, I didn't automatically think "long-term relationship", let alone "future husband". But I really enjoyed talking to him, and when he gave me his number, I was more than happy to call him up (after the obligatory two day wait, of course) to arrange a date.
Still not thinking any further ahead than a month or so at a time, we started to see more and more of each other, and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him. The first time I knew we had something really special was on our first overnight kayak camping trip, about five months into our relationship. We went skinny dipping at midnight (yes, in the sea, in Canada, in May - just about worth it for the awesome phosphorescence) and then snuggled around a campfire on the beach.
But the first time I knew he was "the one"? We were hanging out in my shared house on a rainy Saturday afternoon, playing cribbage. He said something that made me laugh - and it kills me that I can't remember what it was - and I just suddenly realised that I wanted to spend all my rainy Saturday afternoons with him, and that I would be delighted to find myself playing cribbage and listening to his silly banter when we're both in our eighties.
I told you it was lame.
4. Are you planning on having kids anytime in the future?
Nope.
As discussed before, I have multiple reasons for this choice, the primary reason being that I just innately and emphatically know that it isn't for me.
Plans can change... but I am at least 95% sure that if you come and find me in 10 years, I still won't have any kids.
I'm VERY excited though that two close Vancouver friends are pregnant (after years each of trying, they'll be giving birth two weeks apart - wonder what was in the water that month). I've already told them both that I want to be a very active and involved Auntie.
Kids are awesome - as long as you can give them back.
(On my research retreat last week, I had four female colleagues (aged 30s - 50s) separately ask me the same question. When I gave my answer, all but one said "oh, you really should, you know". So the next time someone tells me that they have kids, I want to say "oh, you really shouldn't have done that, you know").
5. What is the most embarrassing drunk thing you have ever done?
OK, this is pretty shameful. One drunken night in my shared student flat in Glasgow, my flatmate and I somehow got into a discussion about the Seven Deadly Sins. Except that we weren't sure what they were. Her version (from her Catholic school education in Ireland) was different to my version (from the movie Se7en, heh), and we had no Bible, encyclopedia or internet to hand.
So... we went to the phone book and got the number for a local convent. Because we were drunk and the answer just simply COULD NOT WAIT, we ignored the fact that nuns are mostly in bed well before 11 pm, and called the number anyway. (When I say we, I mean that I dialled, but she encouraged me and assured me that the nuns wouldn't mind).
Me: "Oh hello, I was just wondering if you could tell me what the Seven Deadly Sins are?" Nun: ".............................no." (click).
We looked the answer up on our other flatmate's computer the next day. My version was right.
Now it's your turn! Do you want to be interviewed?
If you do - here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me" AND leave your email address (or blog link) in the comment! 2. I will respond by emailing you (or commenting on your blog with) five questions. I get to pick the questions. 3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. (If you don't have a blog, I can post your answers here). 4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. 5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
