On June 14th, 2009 was our first anniversary together. Hmm, first anniversary, first anniversary — what do you get a person for their first? Apparently it’s paper! So what we decided to do was head down to one of our favourite places — Seattle, Washington — and spend lots of, you guessed it: paper!
Hotel 1000's TV actually greets me by name!
It was really a LOT of fun. We stayed at an amazing hotel called the Hotel 1000. I TOTALLY recommend it to anyone who is looking for an independently-run hotel in the “Boutique Luxury” style. Isn’t “Boutique” already luxury, you might ask, but really, after our stay there, Hotel 1000 deserves to be broken out from the rest of the pack. It really is classier than your average boutique hotel. I mean really, any place that gives me a fresh cut double rose when I first drive my car into the valet area is +100 above a ton of other places, in my opinion!
The wheels on the Duck go "Quack quack quack!"
We go to Seattle a lot, mostly to visit family and do shopping, but sometimes, like this time, we play tourist. We did a bunch of tourist things we don’t normally do, like the Ride The Ducks of Seattle Tour, which made me smile so hard my cheeks hurt! We had done a tour very similar to this in Boston, and we got addicted to the idea of touring a city by land and sea without even having to step out of the bus. It was totally campy and funny and REALLY fun for a family, I would say. I’ve always wanted to roll down Seattle’s main drag doing the YMCA in a convertible amphibious bus — and now I can say that I have!
We did a bunch of other things, like The Underground Tour, and of course a bunch of shopping, but I think one of the highlights was the Seattle Coffee Crawl, hosted by Seattle By Foot. What an insightful discussion of coffee, which is the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver included. We got to hear a lot about the subtleties of coffee, not just about how it tastes, but also in relation to the politics of business, as in the case of Starbucks, Tully’s, and other big coffee names to come out of Seattle. For anyone who is passionate about coffee, you really got to do this tour.
Anyways, we took a bunch of pictures, for those who want to see what we did. Enjoy!
Happy Anniversary, Clark and Pearle!
Guys, I am completely torn. Those of you who know me will know me as someone who is staunchly against social networking on the web. I know, some will say “But what about your blog” and others will say “But you’re so good with people”. Both kinds of people invariably follow those statements up with the same thought: “You should be on Facebook/Twitter/something else I think is dumb”. Grrr, just because I have a blog doesn’t mean I want to participate in social networking — I won’t bother going into the semantics myself, but the end of the story is that blogging encompasses another part of the social network scheme of things, and I just don’t want to get into the rest of it.
The reason why I’m torn? Well, as most of you know, I am a huge travel buff; when we have the money, we are traveling, and when we don’t, I’m researching into how we can use what little money we have in order to make our travel dreams a reality. I’m even taking a travel and food writing class right now — with all this time I spend obsessing over travel, I might as well use the information I’m gathering to good use! Anyway, a lot of the things I like to look into (i.e.: cruise deals, hotel deals, fun places, etc) invariably refer me to one of their social networking sites. “Follow us on Facebook/Twitter/MySpace” etc, etc. Ever the thorough researcher, I do look into their Facebooks/Twitters/MySpaces and, lo and behold, they are telling users of said social networking sites about DEALS — the kind of deals I would like to know about! Deals they do not tell you about on their websites! This one hotel in Seattle (Hotel Max) is giving a 15% discount to the people who read their… tweets? Twitters? Twits? Whatever. Anyway, how can I, an avid deal finder, just ignore that?!
See, I want to know about all the up and coming information to be had on my favourite travel companies (like Princess Cruises — I didn’t know the Goldern Princess got a makeover until I read their Twitter page), but at the same time, I don’t want to get sucked into something I might not like. Those of you who have gotten this far into a social networking conversation with me have already seen me turn it down “Privacy-Policy-and-Terms-and-Conditions” Lane (Facebook will take most of the heat in those conversations). I have a secret to tell you though: that’s not the primary reason why I won’t get into social networking. You know what really makes me hate Hate HATE the prospect of being on Facebook/Twitter? Other people.
I hate to admit it, but I don’t want to interact with people online anymore — at least I think I don’t. Don’t you tell me that blogging is interacting. It’s not the same; you don’t see kids giving up blogging for Lent making the evening news — Save that for teens addicted to Facebook so much they do that more than their homework. Some people are on it all the time, and that’s because Facebook and Twitter are immediate, instant, and I don’t really need that when it comes to casually talking to my friends and family on the internet. Save that sense of urgency when there’s actually an urgent NEED.
What I’m saying is that, if people find out I’m out there on the social network, they’ll ping me. And, their being bred into expecting an immediate response, they’ll wonder what the heck is wrong with me when I DON’T ping them back right away — or at all. Like I need that drama in my life. I just want the immediacy of a company’s news or deals or whatever.
Anyway, I think I just figured out what I should do, in order to make sure I can still Tweet, but not get “pulled in”: either sign up for Twitter in some kind of ninja-like, anonymous way, or find a way to gather the info I want without signing up, like subscribing to RSS feeds of Twitters… tweets… whatever. Hopefully that will be enough to give me access to the information I want.
A tidbit for those of you who are “Twitter Curious”, as the writer of this post suggests — check it out, ’cause it’s interesting, and a lot more supportive of the idea of getting into it:
http://www.educationbusinessblog.com/2008/12/twitter_basics.html
Oh man, Clark, Manang, Gavin, and I went to see Star Trek last night. HOLY COW was it ever good! People, go drop what you’re doing and go see it!
I kept saying to Clark on the way home afterwards that I was so ashamed to have misjudged it so, previous to watching it, that I actually didn’t want to go see it, for fear that it would wreck the awesomeness of the original Star Trek franchise. I was so wrong — not only did the movie do its roots justice, it totally carved out its own niche of awesomeness.
The thing that really did it was the casting — the actors were GREAT! Each one had some pretty big shoes to fill, but they weren’t phased by that at all; the big catchphrases were all there, from “Damnit Jim” to “Fascinating”, and each one was used in such a way that it didn’t illicit groans but cheers!
Don’t tell Clark but Zachary Quinto is now my current crush. He can mind meld with me any day!
I think I’ll be writing about No to BC-STV in kind of a biased way. After that last bit of research I did into BC-STV, it didn’t take me too long to start thinking “Why the heck WOULD someone say no to it?” One reason why: their advertizing campaign.
When it comes to things like making big decisions, people like to feel supported. Different things can help with that feeling, like seeing something on the TV, or lively internet discussion. Valid points aside, having a well-backed campaign sends a subtle but all-important message that, if the idea is worth spending advertizing money on, it’s worth thinking about.
With that in mind, let us compare campaigns:
Website for: http://www.stv.ca
Website against: http://nostv.org/
Most of the arguments posed on the No-STV page really don’t hold up to scrutiny, like how they’re suggesting that, since the majority of countries that use STV are relatively low-population, there must be something wrong with it, among other things. Also, isn’t a .org URL cheaper than a .ca? I mean, I know it’s about the message not the money, but still, .cx has more street cred.
Facebook group for: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2299654217
Facebook against: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48652177928
I hate Facebook. A lot. But apparently, supporters of No-to-STV hate it more.
YouTube for: http://www.youtube.com/user/STVYesCampaign
YouTube against: I… don’t think there is one.
I mean, there’s stuff on there, but nothing cohesive. Oh well.
OK, so the ability of the No-to-STV team to get their message out is weak. At the end o the day, that’s not necessarily a reason to discount them. But, if anything, it could be indicative of the weakness of the argument against STV. The No-STV site says determining the winner will be confusing, but I got it, and it took me five minutes to figure that out. They also said that the reduction in ridings will unbalance representation. Well, first of all, representation is already skewed — that’s why we’re holding this referendum in the first place — and secondly, STV won’t, on the basis that the number of MLAs will stay the same.
The straw that broke this camel’s back was this post on the No-STV site: I mean, if your cause has to resort to making low-blow analogies that have the home team lose using an STV-like scoring model, then your cause has no honour!
If there are really pressing reasons not to vote for STV, I’m certainly not getting that urgency from their TV ads, their website, and their support. I feel like there’s no love for No-to-BC-STV. This makes me think that maybe there shouldn’t be.
So there’s an election in BC right now. As a province, we’re faced with a tough question. No, it’s not “Who do I vote for?” The question we’re facing is more like “I know I don’t want to vote for Candidate X, but I don’t want to vote for the other guy — so who DO I vote for?”
Here’s the thought process lots of BC voters go through every time we have to vote: Voter might like a certain candidate, but Voter knows he/she won’t win, because BC employs a Plurality Voting System, otherwise known as First-Past-The-Post. It’s a complicated voting system — I barely get it myself, and I’ve been voting since I was able — but basically, a candidate with the number largest number of votes FOR them wins their riding. But see, that doesn’t always represent what the public is saying with their votes. Check this example ballot result out:
Under BC’s current voting system, Candidate A would win. The problem: most of the population voted AGAINST Candidate A being in office — but he/she is getting it anyway! As they say on the internet: WTF?!
Ahem, annnnyway, because of reasons like the above (there are more, I’m sure), lots of voters are faced with kind of a crappy predicament: if you vote for a candidate that probably won’t win — even if they best represent your ideals — voting might seem like a waste! Lots of people think that’s what happened to the Green Party in the last election; some people say they would have had more votes if the voters hadn’t been scared of wasting their ballot. Basically, lots of people feel they’re being put in a position to either choose a candidate not based on his or her own merits — or worse: choose not to vote at all.
So I guess the big question we always seem to ask ourselves at every election isn’t so much “So who do I vote for”, it’s more “How can I make my vote actually count?”
That’s where the discussion around STV comes in. A Commission was formed by the last BC government to look into other kinds of voting, because a lot of people were affected by the above point. Their finding was to have us consider the STV, or Single Transferable Voting System. Now, if you’re like most BCers, you’re probably like me: you’ve heard about STV, but darned if you know anything about it! What makes things more confusing is how, on the TV, there are lots of ads saying good and bad things about the system — I don’t know what to make of it, as of yet. With the election campaign underway, I figured I should take a look into the STV system, because on May 12th, when we hit the polls, we’ll also be asked to decide whether to go with it or not. And I figured I should, because I’ve been one of those people who have been faced with the waste-my-vote predicament. If you’ve been in that situation, feel free to follow along!
This time around, I’m checking out information FOR STV. For that, I went to the above-mentioned commission’s website. Check out this pamphlet they posted – I’m going to employ a little “think aloud” process as I read through it:
How it works:
Interesting things about STV:
OK, so that’s what FOR STV looks like. I’m still looking into AGAINST STV — more on that another time! Until then, I encourage everyone to take a look into BC-STV as much as possible. The more I look into it, the more I think voting on it will be more significant than who I vote for this time around.
A nice, neutral place to start your own fact-finding: Wikipedia (again).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC-STV
