I’m back at work on Canada’s west coast. I run a camp of tree planters every summer, which is a rather strange and adventurous career path. What does this mean for me? Well, I supervise a camp with about sixty-some employees, including two cooks, five foremen, a couple of quality control people, and fifty-odd tree planters. During the next three and a half months, my camp will plant between five and six million trees.
Although the planters usually work a rotating six-day schedule all summer (five days on, one day off), I don’t get that luxury, nor do most of my foremen. I work about 110 days straight, getting up between 5am and 6am, and working until midnight or 1am. I’m responsible for pretty much everything imaginable, from hiring and firing, to overseeing the cooks and making sure that everyone is fed, to scheduling deliveries of food and water, to maintaining a group of up to a dozen trucks, to picking up propane and fuel for the camp, and most importantly, I oversee the safety program to try to make sure everyone stays alive for the summer. Here are some interesting facts:
- My cooks will use about 15,000 eggs this summer. It is not uncommon for some planters to consume six to eight thousand calories per day, and still lose weight. Most of us walk at least twenty kilometers in a typical day, going up and down hills and through swamps and over slash and other obstacles.
- We work in conditions ranging from light snow to temperatures over 35 degrees Celsius. Over the years, I have learned not only to tolerate, but to actually enjoy working in the rain (well, most of the time).
- On a typical spread-out contract, my crews may be planting throughout a region that covers well over twenty-five hundred square kilometers. I have to know exactly where every single person is working at any given time.
- We typically work in central and northern BC and Alberta, although I have worked in Alaska, the Northwest Territories, and Saskatchewan on rare occasions.
- The trucks in my camp will drive a combined total of nearly a quarter million kilometers this summer. I often drive an average of well over four hundred kilometers per day, a significant portion of which is on dirt logging roads.
- Our vehicles will probably burn well over thirty thousand liters of fuel in three months. I have to bring a lot of that fuel into our camp from town, a couple barrels or tidy-tanks at a time. I’ve come to love the smell of diesel in the morning.
- It is common to run into bears, deer, and moose on a daily basis. Occasionally, I’ve run into elk, caribou, lynx, bobcats, and wolves. I don’t mind the wildlife – humans cause more problems than most animals.
- I do not expect to touch another drop of alcohol until mid-August. My responsibilities as a camp supervisor are intense, and I am literally on-call 24 hours per day. I have to be in suitable condition to deal with any kind of problem, no matter how minor or major, at any time of day. I like to say that my job description could be summed up as “putting out fires.”
- I expect to lose about twenty pounds in my first twenty days of work. And if you know me, you’ll realize that I don’t have much to spare. Some of my employees, who plant full-time and don’t spend as much time driving around as I do, will lose much more than that.
I mentioned that overseeing our safety program is one of my main responsibilities. I actually think of it as my most important responsibility, by far. Thankfully, the entire industry has become much more safety-conscious in the past decade. Unfortunately, I have had several planters in my camp who have been killed in the past, which was a really tough experience for everyone in the camp. I’ve had a 23-year-old girl die in my arms. I’ve had planters who have been stabbed and/or thrown in jail, and once I had to take a knife away from a very angry (and very large) man who wanted to stab one of my other planters. I’ve been attacked by an enormous dog on the Alaska highway. I’ve had someone try to steal my truck at night, despite the fact that I was sleeping in the back seat. I’ve tried to “hide” from the police in Fort Nelson (a town with four streets), while driving around in a bright pink hearse. I’ve slept with a rifle under the stars. I’ve ridden to work in helicopters hundreds of times, sometimes in machines without doors or seats. I’ve had employees who have been doctors, lawyers and engineers, and I’ve had employees who have been hippies, convicts, and practicing witches. The former are more manageable, but the latter are more fun to work with. I’ve seen people have mental breakdowns that would make Ken Kesey proud, and I’ve had employees who thought that clothing was optional in the workplace. In short, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things over the years, and I really need to sit down and write a book about it all someday.
I have a tree planting website, www.replant.ca, which sometimes gets as many as a thousand visitors per day from all over Canada and the world. Go to the “Diaries” section on that site, and you’ll see some pretty detailed stories of things that have happened to me and my employees in the past six years or so, since I started keeping regular records. Here’s the link: http://www.replant.ca/diaries.html
Tree planting is one of the strangest, most difficult, and yet most rewarding jobs in the world. I have seen varsity football players sitting on a stump crying, because the job was so much harder than they expected. I’ve also seen 105 pound girls, eating supper with a tired smile, laughing because the job is so much easier than they expected. New planters worry about being able to handle the physical aspects of the job. What they don’t realize is that the mental hardships are what makes most people quit.
Lots of people ask me why I keep doing it, so I tell them that it’s for the money. The job IS incredibly lucrative, but that’s not the real reason. I do it because it gets me into amazing physical shape. I do it because I love working with nature. I do it because I like to be the best at everything I do. And I do it just because I can, while so many other people can’t handle it. I hate my job in a hundred different ways, and I want to quit at least once a week, but as soon as the summer is over, I can’t wait for the next season to begin. And sadly, if you never work as a tree planter, you will never truly be able to understand why.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Everybody's Heard About The Bird
Last week, after going to see DJ Dan play in Halifax, we were driving home when I saw a dead pheasant (frozen solid) in the road. Ian Allen was acting as my Transportation Engineer that night (ie. designated driver) and I told him that I had to have the pheasant. I took it home and hid it in the freezer at the house, so when my roommate Jamie opened the freezer, this dead bird would lunge out at him. He finally found it today, six days later.
But that’s not what I came here to tell you about. I came to talk about the draft. Oh wait, no, that’s a line from “Alice’s Restaurant,” by Arlo Guthrie.
In honor of the frozen pheasant in the freezer, today’s blog topic is about what happens to objects when they get really cold: specifically, what happens to them at absolute zero. So this is a physics-oriented post.
Now I knew that things stop moving around much as they get colder, and even gases will eventually freeze into a liquid form. As a liquid gets colder, the molecules move around less and less, and get closer together. The liquid will then turn into a solid as it gets extremely cold. So I was thinking about this, and trying to decide if that means that all motion stops at absolute zero. I wondered this because I figured that if this was actually the case, the object would shrink massively and become extremely dense. I had to do some digging and reading to figure this out.
I was under the impression that the molecules (or atoms) of a solid are effectively dense and “locked into place,” and stop moving as its gets colder. However, what about the electrons? An atom of a substance is the smallest individual unit possible of a chemical element. For convenience, we generally describe an atom being semi-analogous to a solar system, with the nucleus of the atom being like the sun, and electrons being like planets which are orbiting the sun. But if all motion stops at absolute zero, then the electrons would stop orbiting the nucleus and that obviously does not happen, because if it did, the atom would collapse and become extremely small, and would no longer exist as we know it. Or does it?
After a bit of reading, I learned that while an object does stop emitting radiation at absolute zero, its constituent parts don’t stop moving entirely. The energy and motion is certainly reduced, but the behavior of the object is explained by what is called zero-point motion. That’s a quantum physics theory, not classical physics, so I won’t get into that. But at least my curiosity was solved.
The pheasant certainly doesn’t appear to be moving, but it is interesting to know that even if it was frozen to absolute zero, its component substances would remain active on an atomic/sub-atomic level.
But that’s not what I came here to tell you about. I came to talk about the draft. Oh wait, no, that’s a line from “Alice’s Restaurant,” by Arlo Guthrie.
In honor of the frozen pheasant in the freezer, today’s blog topic is about what happens to objects when they get really cold: specifically, what happens to them at absolute zero. So this is a physics-oriented post.
Now I knew that things stop moving around much as they get colder, and even gases will eventually freeze into a liquid form. As a liquid gets colder, the molecules move around less and less, and get closer together. The liquid will then turn into a solid as it gets extremely cold. So I was thinking about this, and trying to decide if that means that all motion stops at absolute zero. I wondered this because I figured that if this was actually the case, the object would shrink massively and become extremely dense. I had to do some digging and reading to figure this out.
I was under the impression that the molecules (or atoms) of a solid are effectively dense and “locked into place,” and stop moving as its gets colder. However, what about the electrons? An atom of a substance is the smallest individual unit possible of a chemical element. For convenience, we generally describe an atom being semi-analogous to a solar system, with the nucleus of the atom being like the sun, and electrons being like planets which are orbiting the sun. But if all motion stops at absolute zero, then the electrons would stop orbiting the nucleus and that obviously does not happen, because if it did, the atom would collapse and become extremely small, and would no longer exist as we know it. Or does it?
After a bit of reading, I learned that while an object does stop emitting radiation at absolute zero, its constituent parts don’t stop moving entirely. The energy and motion is certainly reduced, but the behavior of the object is explained by what is called zero-point motion. That’s a quantum physics theory, not classical physics, so I won’t get into that. But at least my curiosity was solved.
The pheasant certainly doesn’t appear to be moving, but it is interesting to know that even if it was frozen to absolute zero, its component substances would remain active on an atomic/sub-atomic level.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
White Collar Criminals
Do you know who the real white-collar criminals in Canada are? I'll tell you. It's the Big Five banks.
Let's take ScotiaBank as an example. Not that they are probably any different than any of the others, but I just happen to be working on some accounting right now, doing a bank reconciliation with statements from that institution.
Did you know that with a standard small-business account, they charge $2.00 for every $100.00 of coinage that is deposited? So for example, let's pretend that I own a video arcade. Let's assume that I deposit $1,000 in quarters to my company's chequing account. They will charge $20.00 in service fees (2%) immediately, for the privilege of taking my money. Plus another $1.00 for each deposit as a "transaction fee," just for fun. And let's not forget $1.00 per month for the preparation of my financial statements. So in other words, if I put $1,000 in quarters into my bank account at the start of January, and I don't touch it for twelve months, the bank will charge me a total of $33.00. AND, to add insult to injury, they don't pay interest charges on this type of account for the money that you have sitting in the bank.
Furthermore, switching to a cash-free society won't help. When we used to have debit machines at my bar, before I ripped them out in anger and installed an independent ATM, the bar used to pay over $4,000 per year in annual service charges to ScotiaBank. And that was just for the debit machines, and didn't count all the other service charges on top (incidentally, we also get charged for depositing bills, not just coins).
And they don't pay their staff very well either, considering what kind of revenues/profitability they are raking in.
Criminals, I tell you.
Let's take ScotiaBank as an example. Not that they are probably any different than any of the others, but I just happen to be working on some accounting right now, doing a bank reconciliation with statements from that institution.
Did you know that with a standard small-business account, they charge $2.00 for every $100.00 of coinage that is deposited? So for example, let's pretend that I own a video arcade. Let's assume that I deposit $1,000 in quarters to my company's chequing account. They will charge $20.00 in service fees (2%) immediately, for the privilege of taking my money. Plus another $1.00 for each deposit as a "transaction fee," just for fun. And let's not forget $1.00 per month for the preparation of my financial statements. So in other words, if I put $1,000 in quarters into my bank account at the start of January, and I don't touch it for twelve months, the bank will charge me a total of $33.00. AND, to add insult to injury, they don't pay interest charges on this type of account for the money that you have sitting in the bank.
Furthermore, switching to a cash-free society won't help. When we used to have debit machines at my bar, before I ripped them out in anger and installed an independent ATM, the bar used to pay over $4,000 per year in annual service charges to ScotiaBank. And that was just for the debit machines, and didn't count all the other service charges on top (incidentally, we also get charged for depositing bills, not just coins).
And they don't pay their staff very well either, considering what kind of revenues/profitability they are raking in.
Criminals, I tell you.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Canada's Federal Government
Canada's federal government is apparently offering a new service: time-travel.
Last week, I filled out my taxes. They're pretty simple, and I'm an accountant by training, so it took me about twenty minutes to fill them out. I was quite surprised, however, to see that I would be getting a bit of a refund this year. That doesn't happen very often (although as an accountant, I have to admit that not getting a refund, ie. paying less up front, is a good thing).
Anyway, after I realized this, I noticed the forms that said that I could file online, and get my refund more quickly. I figured that I'd try it out. I managed to set up and access my account, download the right software, and submit my taxes online, all within about another half hour.
Today I got my security code in the mail, which gives me full access to everything online, including the ability to check the status of my refund. So I checked it. It said that the government had already mailed my refund check to me, on April 5th, 2007.
But today is April 4th.
Last week, I filled out my taxes. They're pretty simple, and I'm an accountant by training, so it took me about twenty minutes to fill them out. I was quite surprised, however, to see that I would be getting a bit of a refund this year. That doesn't happen very often (although as an accountant, I have to admit that not getting a refund, ie. paying less up front, is a good thing).
Anyway, after I realized this, I noticed the forms that said that I could file online, and get my refund more quickly. I figured that I'd try it out. I managed to set up and access my account, download the right software, and submit my taxes online, all within about another half hour.
Today I got my security code in the mail, which gives me full access to everything online, including the ability to check the status of my refund. So I checked it. It said that the government had already mailed my refund check to me, on April 5th, 2007.
But today is April 4th.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Tecumseh Curse
There is a "curse" in American politics, which alleges that every American President who is elected in years ending in the digit "0" will die before they leave office. Apparently, this curse was initiated in 1811 when Tecumseh was defeated by General William Henry Harrison, who was leading US forces at the time. Since that battle, let's take a look at what has happened:
1820: Well, let's skip this year. The curse can't be perfect, and some things take a while to get rolling.
1840: Henry Harrison (yes, the same former general) was elected President. At his inauguration speech, he gave an hour and a half long speech on a windy day. Unfortunately, he caught a cold, and died of pneumonia a month later.
1860: Surely you all know what happened to Abraham Lincoln, who was elected in 1860 and shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865 while still President.
1880: James Garfield was elected, and six months later was shot & killed by Charles Guiteau.
1900: William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz. Interestingly, he survived at first, but doctors didn't want to risk removing a bullet from his body, and although the X-ray machine had just been invented and was available in Buffalo, where he was shot, doctors decided that the new machine was too risky to use on the President. He died a week later after going into shock.
1920: Warren Harding was elected. Later in his term, he died of a heart attack in San Francisco. Many Americans allegedly thought this to be a good thing, since he was such a weak president.
1940: Roosevelt was re-elected President. Later in the same decade, he died of a brain aneurysm while still in office.
1960: John F. Kennedy was elected, and then on November 22nd, 1963, was shot (ostensibly by Lee Harvey Oswald, although many conspiracy theorists would argue against that).
1980: Ronald Reagan was elected. Here again, the curse seems to be weakening. Although there was an assassination attempt on him by John Hinkley, and he was shot, the wound was not fatal. Some superstitious people allege that he survived because his wife, Nancy, organized public prayers for him and invited many Native Americans to participate.
2000: George W. Bush was elected. On May 10th, 2005, he actually survived an assassination attempt in Georgia (the country), when Vladimir Arutinian threw a hand grenade at him and the President of Georgia. However, the grenade failed to go off.
It remains to be seen whether or not Bush will outlast the Tecumseh Curse. He has about, um, just under two years remaining in office, if the inauguration of the 2008 Presidential election winner takes place the following January. And whatever many of us think of his political abilities (or lack thereof), hopefully he will not be assassinated while in office.
While at university, I've studied a number of disciplines, including math & computer science, engineering, commerce, history, and Spanish. For the past few days, I've been cooped up at home and working on accounting, and I thought I would procrastinate for an hour before bed: hence the reason for this little post. History is so much more interesting than accounting ...
1820: Well, let's skip this year. The curse can't be perfect, and some things take a while to get rolling.
1840: Henry Harrison (yes, the same former general) was elected President. At his inauguration speech, he gave an hour and a half long speech on a windy day. Unfortunately, he caught a cold, and died of pneumonia a month later.
1860: Surely you all know what happened to Abraham Lincoln, who was elected in 1860 and shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865 while still President.
1880: James Garfield was elected, and six months later was shot & killed by Charles Guiteau.
1900: William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz. Interestingly, he survived at first, but doctors didn't want to risk removing a bullet from his body, and although the X-ray machine had just been invented and was available in Buffalo, where he was shot, doctors decided that the new machine was too risky to use on the President. He died a week later after going into shock.
1920: Warren Harding was elected. Later in his term, he died of a heart attack in San Francisco. Many Americans allegedly thought this to be a good thing, since he was such a weak president.
1940: Roosevelt was re-elected President. Later in the same decade, he died of a brain aneurysm while still in office.
1960: John F. Kennedy was elected, and then on November 22nd, 1963, was shot (ostensibly by Lee Harvey Oswald, although many conspiracy theorists would argue against that).
1980: Ronald Reagan was elected. Here again, the curse seems to be weakening. Although there was an assassination attempt on him by John Hinkley, and he was shot, the wound was not fatal. Some superstitious people allege that he survived because his wife, Nancy, organized public prayers for him and invited many Native Americans to participate.
2000: George W. Bush was elected. On May 10th, 2005, he actually survived an assassination attempt in Georgia (the country), when Vladimir Arutinian threw a hand grenade at him and the President of Georgia. However, the grenade failed to go off.
It remains to be seen whether or not Bush will outlast the Tecumseh Curse. He has about, um, just under two years remaining in office, if the inauguration of the 2008 Presidential election winner takes place the following January. And whatever many of us think of his political abilities (or lack thereof), hopefully he will not be assassinated while in office.
While at university, I've studied a number of disciplines, including math & computer science, engineering, commerce, history, and Spanish. For the past few days, I've been cooped up at home and working on accounting, and I thought I would procrastinate for an hour before bed: hence the reason for this little post. History is so much more interesting than accounting ...
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Seattle and Vancouver
I spent a few days in Seattle last week, and then a couple more in Vancouver.
On Thursday afternoon, I arrived in Seattle. Tim Carstons picked me up at the airport, and got me to a friend's place that I was staying at. Unfortunately, that friend (Robert Walker) was in New Zealand at the time, so I didn't get to see him.
On Thursday evening, I played a full show (three hours) at En, a nice Japanese bar & restaurant that has an outlet in Seattle and another location in Tokyo. I usually play in clubs that don't serve food, so it was an interesting change get a good meal while I was playing. On Friday night, Tim took me sight-seeing for a bit and I got a chance to go to the top of the Seattle Needle, which had a spectacular view. After that, we went back to En, and I played again. However, Friday night was just a short set, and two other DJ's played too, so I actually got to sit down and enjoy someone else playing for a change.
On Saturday, I flew to Vancouver, where I spent the weekend with Shawn Cole. Shawn now owns the Lab Monkey recording studio, and he also teaches a few courses at one of the sound engineering schools in the city. Shawn used to be my roommate quite a few years ago, and was a DJ at the MTA Pub and my Assistant Manager for a while. On Saturday evening, we hit the studio and had a little bit of a party. On Sunday, Shawn had to record a group (Bend Sinister) at the Mushroom Studio, so I spent the afternoon and evening at the studio with him.
I had a flight back to Toronto late Sunday night, but unfortunately, that plane got delayed coming from Mexico, so I missed my connection in Toronto. There was chaos at the Toronto airport. Air Canada had overbooked several flights, and people were getting bumped everywhere. Now I can't fault Air Canada for overbooking a flight slightly, because that's a reasonable business decision since there are usually a couple of no-shows on each flight. However, some of these flights had apparently been over-booked by several dozen people, and a lot of the people in the airport were extremely pissed. Add to that the fact that it was snowing, and the airport was also having problems de-icing enough planes, and it turned into a generally bad day for air travel. Luckily, I am the most patient traveller in the world, so I just bought a couple books and hung out in the corner.
Throughout the day, I managed to get bumped off seven different flights. The last one was a bit of a disappointment - I was actually given the very last seat on the plane, on standby, and I was a couple feet through the gate when the passenger who owned my seat showed up at the last second and I got called back. I was a little annoyed at that, since there were no flights open on Tuesday, which meant that my choices were either to spend another day and a half in the airport, or to take a flight to Saint John and hitch-hike home in the middle of the night (since the bus station would be closed by the time I arrived). I had asked for a seat on the Saint John flight earlier in the afternoon, just to be safe, and my luggage was checked for that flight. However, after I got pulled away from the seventh Moncton flight, the agent said to hold on, because there was one more flight to Moncton that I hadn't known about. When that flight finally got ready to go, once again a bunch of standby people got the first half-dozen empty seats, then my name was once again called for the very last seat. How's that for luck?
Now I just have to wait for my luggage to arrive from Saint John, although I always take my records as a carry-on so I don't have to worry about losing my music or headphones.
On Thursday afternoon, I arrived in Seattle. Tim Carstons picked me up at the airport, and got me to a friend's place that I was staying at. Unfortunately, that friend (Robert Walker) was in New Zealand at the time, so I didn't get to see him.
On Thursday evening, I played a full show (three hours) at En, a nice Japanese bar & restaurant that has an outlet in Seattle and another location in Tokyo. I usually play in clubs that don't serve food, so it was an interesting change get a good meal while I was playing. On Friday night, Tim took me sight-seeing for a bit and I got a chance to go to the top of the Seattle Needle, which had a spectacular view. After that, we went back to En, and I played again. However, Friday night was just a short set, and two other DJ's played too, so I actually got to sit down and enjoy someone else playing for a change.
On Saturday, I flew to Vancouver, where I spent the weekend with Shawn Cole. Shawn now owns the Lab Monkey recording studio, and he also teaches a few courses at one of the sound engineering schools in the city. Shawn used to be my roommate quite a few years ago, and was a DJ at the MTA Pub and my Assistant Manager for a while. On Saturday evening, we hit the studio and had a little bit of a party. On Sunday, Shawn had to record a group (Bend Sinister) at the Mushroom Studio, so I spent the afternoon and evening at the studio with him.
I had a flight back to Toronto late Sunday night, but unfortunately, that plane got delayed coming from Mexico, so I missed my connection in Toronto. There was chaos at the Toronto airport. Air Canada had overbooked several flights, and people were getting bumped everywhere. Now I can't fault Air Canada for overbooking a flight slightly, because that's a reasonable business decision since there are usually a couple of no-shows on each flight. However, some of these flights had apparently been over-booked by several dozen people, and a lot of the people in the airport were extremely pissed. Add to that the fact that it was snowing, and the airport was also having problems de-icing enough planes, and it turned into a generally bad day for air travel. Luckily, I am the most patient traveller in the world, so I just bought a couple books and hung out in the corner.
Throughout the day, I managed to get bumped off seven different flights. The last one was a bit of a disappointment - I was actually given the very last seat on the plane, on standby, and I was a couple feet through the gate when the passenger who owned my seat showed up at the last second and I got called back. I was a little annoyed at that, since there were no flights open on Tuesday, which meant that my choices were either to spend another day and a half in the airport, or to take a flight to Saint John and hitch-hike home in the middle of the night (since the bus station would be closed by the time I arrived). I had asked for a seat on the Saint John flight earlier in the afternoon, just to be safe, and my luggage was checked for that flight. However, after I got pulled away from the seventh Moncton flight, the agent said to hold on, because there was one more flight to Moncton that I hadn't known about. When that flight finally got ready to go, once again a bunch of standby people got the first half-dozen empty seats, then my name was once again called for the very last seat. How's that for luck?
Now I just have to wait for my luggage to arrive from Saint John, although I always take my records as a carry-on so I don't have to worry about losing my music or headphones.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Tokyo, Japan
After visiting Osaka, I spent a few days in Tokyo. While I was there, I stayed with Kevin Snedker, a good friend of mine who used to be the Assistant Manager at the MTA Pub while he was at university. Kevin has been teaching English into Tokyo for the past couple of years.
We took the Shinkansen (the bullet train) from Osaka on Monday morning, and ended up having drinks on the train to get the trip started. When we got to Tokyo, we didn’t have anything planned until supper, so we mostly relaxed for the afternoon. After supper, we walked around the city for a while, then we spent several hours having dinner and drinks at The Lockup, and I met several of Kevin and Danielle’s friends. Several of them were Canadians or Australians who are working for a company called Nova, teaching English in Japan, and I also met Danielle’s friend Yuka.
Naturally, I didn’t get to sleep until about 7am, so I got nothing accomplished on Tuesday morning. However, in the afternoon, I walked around Tokyo, and Kevin took me to the Meiji Shrine. This was a large park area in the middle of Tokyo, with a large Shinto shrine in the middle. After Meiji, we spent several hours walking around the Electronics District, then went for dinner on the 49th floor of the fourth tallest building in the city. The view was incredible, and I was lucky enough to get some really good time-exposure photos of Tokyo at night. After dinner, we went to a couple bars, and again, stayed up pretty much all night.
On Wednesday, I slept for most of the morning and afternoon. I played at Velours that night, which was a fashion bar with a very high-class clientele. The venue was gorgeous, with chandeliers and comfortable couches everywhere, and the place was full of fashion models and other notable people. I played from 1:30am to 4:00am, and it was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a show, just because the venue was so different than most of the several dozen other places that I've played in.
Here are some photos from the trip:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_tokyo2007a.html
Unfortunately, on Thursday, I had to get ready to move on. The four-hour trip to the airport in the afternoon was a bit of an adventure, but I made the plane with a little bit of time to spare. The neat thing about the flight was that I left Tokyo on Thursday at supper, and I was booked to DJ in Seattle on Thursday evening. However, flying across the International Date Line moved me backwards by a day, so I arrived in Seattle at lunch on Thursday.
More notes to come shortly about Seattle and Vancouver …
We took the Shinkansen (the bullet train) from Osaka on Monday morning, and ended up having drinks on the train to get the trip started. When we got to Tokyo, we didn’t have anything planned until supper, so we mostly relaxed for the afternoon. After supper, we walked around the city for a while, then we spent several hours having dinner and drinks at The Lockup, and I met several of Kevin and Danielle’s friends. Several of them were Canadians or Australians who are working for a company called Nova, teaching English in Japan, and I also met Danielle’s friend Yuka.
Naturally, I didn’t get to sleep until about 7am, so I got nothing accomplished on Tuesday morning. However, in the afternoon, I walked around Tokyo, and Kevin took me to the Meiji Shrine. This was a large park area in the middle of Tokyo, with a large Shinto shrine in the middle. After Meiji, we spent several hours walking around the Electronics District, then went for dinner on the 49th floor of the fourth tallest building in the city. The view was incredible, and I was lucky enough to get some really good time-exposure photos of Tokyo at night. After dinner, we went to a couple bars, and again, stayed up pretty much all night.
On Wednesday, I slept for most of the morning and afternoon. I played at Velours that night, which was a fashion bar with a very high-class clientele. The venue was gorgeous, with chandeliers and comfortable couches everywhere, and the place was full of fashion models and other notable people. I played from 1:30am to 4:00am, and it was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a show, just because the venue was so different than most of the several dozen other places that I've played in.
Here are some photos from the trip:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_tokyo2007a.html
Unfortunately, on Thursday, I had to get ready to move on. The four-hour trip to the airport in the afternoon was a bit of an adventure, but I made the plane with a little bit of time to spare. The neat thing about the flight was that I left Tokyo on Thursday at supper, and I was booked to DJ in Seattle on Thursday evening. However, flying across the International Date Line moved me backwards by a day, so I arrived in Seattle at lunch on Thursday.
More notes to come shortly about Seattle and Vancouver …
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Osaka, Japan
I flew to Osaka (Japan) this past weekend for a show. Although I’ve travelled pretty extensively before, this is my first time in Asia, so it’s been a great adventure so far.
I started by trying to fly to San Francisco for a visit on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I flew through Montreal and then Chicago. I got to Chicago with no problems, but when I arrived there, I found out that there had been a huge snowstorm there the previous day, which had cancelled over a thousand flights. It was really nice outside at the time, with very little snow on the ground, so I didn’t really think that there were going to be any problems. However, when I got onto the plane, the airline eventually said that they couldn’t fly us to San Francisco because there were no pilots left in the airport – the pilots for our flight had been diverted to fly another plane earlier, to help catch up on the backlog of stranded passengers.
This didn’t seem like it would be a problem – they said that they were going to fly in a different crew from New York to take our plane to San Francisco, so the delay would only be a few hours. However, by this time, the storm had moved so it was over New York, which meant that it took a couple hours longer than expected for that crew to get out of LaGuardia. By the time they arrived in Chicago, the airline decided that those pilots couldn’t take our plane to San Francisco, because it would put them over their daily flight time limit. Our entire flight ended up getting cancelled, which was a disaster because that put all of us into the huge pool of people waiting to fly stand-by. I then ended up getting bumped off or passed over for the next four flights to San Francisco, as the airline tried to slowly catch up on the backlog.
In the end, I did get to San Francisco, but not until after midnight (about twelve hours later than expected). I was a little disappointed by that, because that was the stop on the trip that I was looking forward to the most. However, on a positive note, it was the one night on the trip where I could mostly easily deal with not showing up. Hopefully I’ll be able to reschedule for a visit later this spring, or maybe right after the summer ends.
The rest of the trip went smoothly, and the flights to Vancouver and then Japan were uneventful. We crossed the International Date Line, so it suddenly became Friday afternoon instead of Thursday afternoon. I was a bit nervous getting into the airport because my passport was only valid for two more months and Japan requires a foreigner’s passport to be valid for six months from the time of arrival. However, I had the itinerary to prove that I had a flight already booked to leave the country a week later, so that didn’t turn out to be a problem. Dan Elliot from the Oasis Lounge picked me up at the airport, and took me directly to his club, where I started to orient myself to the Japanese culture. A few hours later, a friend of mine (Ian Warney) showed up. Ian is a DJ and is living in Osaka teaching English. We went out for a night on the town, and I met a bunch of people that evening.
On Saturday, I spent the day touring around Osaka, and taking photos. That evening, I played at Oasis, which turned out to be a very fun night. Ian found me again on Sunday night and we went out for more sightseeing, and then we ate at a nice restaurant in a skyscraper overlooking Osaka.
So far, Japan has been great. There are far fewer foreigners here than I had imagined, but that’s about the only real surprise. The only big challenge so far has been trying to figure out the subway system. I’ve been on subways all around the world (London, New York, Paris, Moscow, and a ton of other smaller cities) but the Osaka subway has been the most confusing that I’ve seen, by far. The fare varies depending on how far you are going, and you have to buy a ticket getting on, then electronic gates scan it as you leave your destination station and don’t let you out if you didn’t pay the right fare. If you didn’t pay enough, you have to go back to another machine and do a “fare adjust” on the ticket. The Osaka (and Toyko) subway systems are not one large system, but instead are a whole bunch of separate lines run by different companies, so transfers can get complicated with ticket changes. Finally, there are very few signs in English, to make things even more confusing. However, after a few days, it was starting to make sense to me. Some of the stations are incredibly busy though – there is one station which has an average of three MILLION people per day passing through it. That’s pretty impressive, considering that the subways shut down at 12:30am and don’t start again until 5:30am.
A few other interesting notes so far:
- The cities are very clean compared to North American cities.
- There is apparently very, very little crime in Japan, and people feel completely safe and comfortable walking around anywhere in the cities.
- I have only seen a few children in the entire time I’ve been here – the Japanese must hide them away somewhere.
- I thought that I might get away with not running into anyone I knew during my visit, but on Sunday night a friend who had gone to university (Kyohei) saw me downtown and luckily had the time to spend an hour or so touring with us. That was an interesting coincidence, considering that Osaka is pretty big (nine million people, I think).
- There are far fewer Western chains than I had expected (lots of Starbucks & MacDonald’s and KFC, but that’s about it).
- A small but noticeable percentage of the population wear face masks in public and while working, either to limit the spread of diseases, or to protect them from smog & allergies.
- The amount of seafood is astounding – it is available everywhere, even as snack food in convenience stores.
Needless to say, I’ve been able to take a ton of interesting photos so far. I’ve got two photo pages up on my website now from the Osaka portion of my trip, and I’ve tried to add many more observations about Japan in the captions to the photos. Here is a link to the Osaka photo pages:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_osaka2007a.html
After I left Osaka on Monday morning, I had three days scheduled in Tokyo, so I’ll write more about that part of the trip in a few days.
I started by trying to fly to San Francisco for a visit on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I flew through Montreal and then Chicago. I got to Chicago with no problems, but when I arrived there, I found out that there had been a huge snowstorm there the previous day, which had cancelled over a thousand flights. It was really nice outside at the time, with very little snow on the ground, so I didn’t really think that there were going to be any problems. However, when I got onto the plane, the airline eventually said that they couldn’t fly us to San Francisco because there were no pilots left in the airport – the pilots for our flight had been diverted to fly another plane earlier, to help catch up on the backlog of stranded passengers.
This didn’t seem like it would be a problem – they said that they were going to fly in a different crew from New York to take our plane to San Francisco, so the delay would only be a few hours. However, by this time, the storm had moved so it was over New York, which meant that it took a couple hours longer than expected for that crew to get out of LaGuardia. By the time they arrived in Chicago, the airline decided that those pilots couldn’t take our plane to San Francisco, because it would put them over their daily flight time limit. Our entire flight ended up getting cancelled, which was a disaster because that put all of us into the huge pool of people waiting to fly stand-by. I then ended up getting bumped off or passed over for the next four flights to San Francisco, as the airline tried to slowly catch up on the backlog.
In the end, I did get to San Francisco, but not until after midnight (about twelve hours later than expected). I was a little disappointed by that, because that was the stop on the trip that I was looking forward to the most. However, on a positive note, it was the one night on the trip where I could mostly easily deal with not showing up. Hopefully I’ll be able to reschedule for a visit later this spring, or maybe right after the summer ends.
The rest of the trip went smoothly, and the flights to Vancouver and then Japan were uneventful. We crossed the International Date Line, so it suddenly became Friday afternoon instead of Thursday afternoon. I was a bit nervous getting into the airport because my passport was only valid for two more months and Japan requires a foreigner’s passport to be valid for six months from the time of arrival. However, I had the itinerary to prove that I had a flight already booked to leave the country a week later, so that didn’t turn out to be a problem. Dan Elliot from the Oasis Lounge picked me up at the airport, and took me directly to his club, where I started to orient myself to the Japanese culture. A few hours later, a friend of mine (Ian Warney) showed up. Ian is a DJ and is living in Osaka teaching English. We went out for a night on the town, and I met a bunch of people that evening.
On Saturday, I spent the day touring around Osaka, and taking photos. That evening, I played at Oasis, which turned out to be a very fun night. Ian found me again on Sunday night and we went out for more sightseeing, and then we ate at a nice restaurant in a skyscraper overlooking Osaka.
So far, Japan has been great. There are far fewer foreigners here than I had imagined, but that’s about the only real surprise. The only big challenge so far has been trying to figure out the subway system. I’ve been on subways all around the world (London, New York, Paris, Moscow, and a ton of other smaller cities) but the Osaka subway has been the most confusing that I’ve seen, by far. The fare varies depending on how far you are going, and you have to buy a ticket getting on, then electronic gates scan it as you leave your destination station and don’t let you out if you didn’t pay the right fare. If you didn’t pay enough, you have to go back to another machine and do a “fare adjust” on the ticket. The Osaka (and Toyko) subway systems are not one large system, but instead are a whole bunch of separate lines run by different companies, so transfers can get complicated with ticket changes. Finally, there are very few signs in English, to make things even more confusing. However, after a few days, it was starting to make sense to me. Some of the stations are incredibly busy though – there is one station which has an average of three MILLION people per day passing through it. That’s pretty impressive, considering that the subways shut down at 12:30am and don’t start again until 5:30am.
A few other interesting notes so far:
- The cities are very clean compared to North American cities.
- There is apparently very, very little crime in Japan, and people feel completely safe and comfortable walking around anywhere in the cities.
- I have only seen a few children in the entire time I’ve been here – the Japanese must hide them away somewhere.
- I thought that I might get away with not running into anyone I knew during my visit, but on Sunday night a friend who had gone to university (Kyohei) saw me downtown and luckily had the time to spend an hour or so touring with us. That was an interesting coincidence, considering that Osaka is pretty big (nine million people, I think).
- There are far fewer Western chains than I had expected (lots of Starbucks & MacDonald’s and KFC, but that’s about it).
- A small but noticeable percentage of the population wear face masks in public and while working, either to limit the spread of diseases, or to protect them from smog & allergies.
- The amount of seafood is astounding – it is available everywhere, even as snack food in convenience stores.
Needless to say, I’ve been able to take a ton of interesting photos so far. I’ve got two photo pages up on my website now from the Osaka portion of my trip, and I’ve tried to add many more observations about Japan in the captions to the photos. Here is a link to the Osaka photo pages:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_osaka2007a.html
After I left Osaka on Monday morning, I had three days scheduled in Tokyo, so I’ll write more about that part of the trip in a few days.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Benny Benassi
I went to a Benny Benassi show in Halifax last night, at Club Rain. This wasn't really a DJ-oriented trip; I took a bunch of the Pub staff with me and we went down to enjoy the show. Here are the photos:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_benassi2007.html
I've been pretty slack with blog posts lately, since I've been so busy in the past four weeks. I'm leaving on Wednesday morning for a short tour, and I'll be visiting San Francisco, Osaka, Tokyo, Seattle, and Vancouver. I'll try to get as many photos as I can at each show, and hopefully I'll be able to take the mini-disc and record all of the sets for my website.
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_benassi2007.html
I've been pretty slack with blog posts lately, since I've been so busy in the past four weeks. I'm leaving on Wednesday morning for a short tour, and I'll be visiting San Francisco, Osaka, Tokyo, Seattle, and Vancouver. I'll try to get as many photos as I can at each show, and hopefully I'll be able to take the mini-disc and record all of the sets for my website.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Yellow Beer, White Foam
It's Friday night, and I'm stuck at home. I was supposed to go to a show in Halifax - DJ & Producer Martin Villeneuve from Ottawa was playing - but the weather was too rough for the drive, with snow and icy highways. So instead I decided to find something else to distract me, which admittedly didn't take long, since I have a huge backlog of work that I'm trying to plow through. But while I was working, I thought that it wouldn't hurt to have a glass of beer.
Have you ever really just sat and stared at a glass of beer? And if you did, did you notice anything funny? A lot of people look at things, but they don't see them. When I look at something, I like to pay attention to detail, because there are a lot of things in this world that don't make sense on the surface, if you think about them. Beer is a perfect example. If beer is yellow, then why is it that when you froth it up, the foam is white? Aha! How many people have really thought about this?
I will attempt to explain this to you, being a bit of a closet physicist (and yes, I had to think about this for a bit). You'll note that I said "closet" physicist, not "professional," so if I have any of the science wrong in this, a proper physicist can feel free to add their opinion. And also, for the sake of colour authenticity, let's assume that we're studying a bottle of Corona, rather than a dark British stout or something like that.
First, you need to know how light works. We see different colours due to many different processes. When direct light hits our eyes, the frequencies of the visible spectrum are sort of "directly" visible, as is, and if there is a combination of all frequencies, we see white (true physicists please bear with me, as this whole explanation is significantly dumbed down for the layman). In contrast, reflected light from any object is sort of the reverse concept. The object is a certain "colour" because it absorbs certain wavelengths, and the ones that it doesn't absorb are reflected away, and those are the ones that we see. So in truth, we've got a sort of "negative image" thing happening here with pigments. Anyway, that's not that important. Well, it is, but not for our beer. The point is that when we look at a beer, what we see are the frequencies of light passing through it.
Normally, a beer is illuminated by a form of white light, or an amalgam of visible frequencies. However, some of the "stuff" in beer will absorb some of those frequencies more than it absorbs other frequencies. In the particular example of beer, the constituent components tend to absorb all the frequencies except the ones that we perceive as golden yellow. So in other words, just as your kidneys filter the beer, your beer filters the light passing through it, letting the golden yellow rays through, but blocking the violets and indigos and all that other stuff.
Now you're probably wondering, "Why does this matter? Beer foam is just made of beer - if you wait long enough, it settles out. The only difference is that the foam is in the shape of bubbles, full of air." That's what I wondered for a couple minutes.
But there is the clue to help you solve the problem. The foam is full of air. In other words, there is "less beer" in the foam than there is in the liquid further down in the glass. The foam is less dense than the liquid beer. After you remember that the beer is blocking certain wavelengths, you can deduce that the foam, being less dense, is also blocking those same wavelengths, except that it is not doing as good a job because there is less absolute material that the light is being filtered through. Because of that, all the frequencies are pretty much getting through the foam, and we see white light, which is the combination of all frequencies. If you actually look very closely, slightly dense foam will have a faint yellowish tinge, and the foam that is lower and closer to the liquid beer is denser and therefore even less pure white than the "thinner" foam at the very top of the glass.
Not really that strange, when you think about it.
Have you ever really just sat and stared at a glass of beer? And if you did, did you notice anything funny? A lot of people look at things, but they don't see them. When I look at something, I like to pay attention to detail, because there are a lot of things in this world that don't make sense on the surface, if you think about them. Beer is a perfect example. If beer is yellow, then why is it that when you froth it up, the foam is white? Aha! How many people have really thought about this?
I will attempt to explain this to you, being a bit of a closet physicist (and yes, I had to think about this for a bit). You'll note that I said "closet" physicist, not "professional," so if I have any of the science wrong in this, a proper physicist can feel free to add their opinion. And also, for the sake of colour authenticity, let's assume that we're studying a bottle of Corona, rather than a dark British stout or something like that.
First, you need to know how light works. We see different colours due to many different processes. When direct light hits our eyes, the frequencies of the visible spectrum are sort of "directly" visible, as is, and if there is a combination of all frequencies, we see white (true physicists please bear with me, as this whole explanation is significantly dumbed down for the layman). In contrast, reflected light from any object is sort of the reverse concept. The object is a certain "colour" because it absorbs certain wavelengths, and the ones that it doesn't absorb are reflected away, and those are the ones that we see. So in truth, we've got a sort of "negative image" thing happening here with pigments. Anyway, that's not that important. Well, it is, but not for our beer. The point is that when we look at a beer, what we see are the frequencies of light passing through it.
Normally, a beer is illuminated by a form of white light, or an amalgam of visible frequencies. However, some of the "stuff" in beer will absorb some of those frequencies more than it absorbs other frequencies. In the particular example of beer, the constituent components tend to absorb all the frequencies except the ones that we perceive as golden yellow. So in other words, just as your kidneys filter the beer, your beer filters the light passing through it, letting the golden yellow rays through, but blocking the violets and indigos and all that other stuff.
Now you're probably wondering, "Why does this matter? Beer foam is just made of beer - if you wait long enough, it settles out. The only difference is that the foam is in the shape of bubbles, full of air." That's what I wondered for a couple minutes.
But there is the clue to help you solve the problem. The foam is full of air. In other words, there is "less beer" in the foam than there is in the liquid further down in the glass. The foam is less dense than the liquid beer. After you remember that the beer is blocking certain wavelengths, you can deduce that the foam, being less dense, is also blocking those same wavelengths, except that it is not doing as good a job because there is less absolute material that the light is being filtered through. Because of that, all the frequencies are pretty much getting through the foam, and we see white light, which is the combination of all frequencies. If you actually look very closely, slightly dense foam will have a faint yellowish tinge, and the foam that is lower and closer to the liquid beer is denser and therefore even less pure white than the "thinner" foam at the very top of the glass.
Not really that strange, when you think about it.
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