I can’t believe it’s September already. The weather is starting to become cool and wet, days are becoming shorter, marking the end of what has been an incredible summer (and year to date). It’s been a while since I’ve written here, so with the changing season I thought I’d share a bit of an update of 2016 so far.
Some of these warrant their own blog posts, but until I have time to write the full thing here is a summary. Continue Reading
Earlier this year, in search of a new hobby, I took an Amateur radio course (also known as ham radio) and received my license about a month ago. Amateur radio is all about non-commercial communication over radio waves. Most consumer walkie-talkies (like ones using the FRS) work only over several kilometers in the best of conditions. Believe it or not, Amateurs are able to use equipment to communicate all over the world, and even into space contacting the International Space Station using radio frequencies. This kind of communication was probably more popular decades ago when there was no Internet, or cheap long distance phone calls. However, Amateurs still involve themselves in activities such as contests contacting the most people, and on a more practical level (at least to me) emergency and volunteer event communications.
So putting my new license into use, last Sunday I helped out with the Vancouver Sun Run as an Amateur Radio operator. With about 80 other Amateurs, we were positioned in pairs along the entire 10km route.
Yesterday, for some odd reason, I woke up wanting to visit the Vancouver Art Gallery. I haven’t been in that art gallery for probably more than 10-15 years. When I was very young my mom used to have a membership and brought me on Sundays after church to participate in some kids art activities, but I haven’t been since then.
As it was Tuesday, I took advantage of the Art Gallery’s admission-by-donation time in the evening. It’s the only day of the week that the Gallery is open late in the evening so I could visit after work. Also, I wasn’t going to pay $24 to look around. I was originally going to pay $5 to get in (really just wanting a quick look around not expecting to be interested too much), but the sign at the door suggested a $10 donation, so I went with that. Continue Reading
At one of our recent EDGE youth ministry sessions talking about the Corporal Work of Mercy “giving drink to the thirsty”, we challenged our youth and ourselves as leaders to complete the 4 Liters challenge. On a normal day most of us use over 350 liters of water, however, for many other people around the world, water is not as abundant and people may be lucky to get four liters of water each day. So the challenge is to live in “water poverty” for one day, using only four liters of water over a 24-hour period.
I ended up picking last Thursday to do this. I was working from home that day since our team would be going Go-Karting close to where I live. Since I would be home for the majority of the day anyway, I figured it would be slightly easier to measure my water consumption. On the other hand, you could call it slightly cheating – it definitely was not a regular day for me.
So to plan out my 4L day, I roughly allocated 1L for my morning routine and breakfast, 2L to drink during my “work” time, and the remaining 1L for the evening and dinner. Here’s how my day went: Continue Reading
I commute from Richmond to Downtown Vancouver every day for work. Normally I take the Canada Line, which is a quick and reliable way to and from work. As much as I like trains, some days it just seems boring; after all, the majority of the ride is underground.
So I tasked myself to find five different ways to get to work (potentially one for each day of the week), if I wanted to take a break from the Canada Line. Let’s assume we’re commuting from Richmond Centre to Waterfront. Obviously we’re not optimizing for travel time.
A nice ride to UBC then along 4th Avenue, Burrard Street Bridge downtown. If you’re lucky, you can complete this entire route on articulated buses.
I’d probably consider this one the most unscenic one, but it only involves one transfer and is a bus-only route. Probably a good one for napping.
An express bus to Metrotown, then a ride on the SkyTrain downtown. If you’re extremely lucky, you may find a seat at the front of the SkyTrain.
Kind of the same as the previous option except this one includes a highway run along Highway 91, but no express through the city. This has a longer SkyTrain ride too, which also includes passing the SkyTrain yard.
And finally the crazy bus-only route. Almost guaranteed to ride four different types of buses – a New Flyer 40 footer on the 407, an articulated bus on the 480, a trolley bus on the 17 and most likely a Novabus on the 50.
Of course these options aren’t exhaustive; there are many other combinations that can loop through all parts of town. But these are the ones off the top of my head that balance being interesting and getting to work in a reasonable amount of time.
