One hates to be critical of the fundraising efforts of a hospital in this age of chronic government underfunding, but I just can’t help it in the case of St. Paul’s annual “Lights of Hope” campaign.

Annually at this time of year, I hope that the display wil not be re-erected, and am always disappointed. If you haven’t seen it, it is comprised of a wall of scaffolding, such as the type used in the repair of leaky condos, except without the synthetic covering that prevents moisture from hitting the exposed surfaces during the repairs. Here is a photograph that I stole from a website that actually promotes this visual assault as a tourist attraction (click for a larger view):

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This is a picture from last year, so the new addition this year is not visible. The gap that you can see to the right of the tree is a tunnel through the scaffolding, allowing pedestrians access to the hospital entrance. This year, the tunnel has been rounded and filled with white lights. It’s rather a disturbing feature, not so much because the healthy people who walk through it are apt to expect to encounter a Siegfried and Roy show upon reaching the interior, but because if sick people walk through – not an entirely unlikely possibility, considering the nature of the business – they may in their general terror mistake the white lights for the entranceway to heaven upon their demise (however hellish the scene).

I’m not sure what’s worse – seeing it at night, all aglow, or during the day, when it looks like a poorly assembled construction site. And this in honour of Christ’s birth? The poor old Sisters of Providence must surely be spinning in their graves, their life work having been turned over to the management of an ad agency of questionable taste (like there are any ad agencies of impeccable taste!).

As someone who is a bit cynical about politics, I can’t help but think that the wretched display is a plot by the provincial ministry of health to engender public support for the proposed move of the hospital to the Terminal street flats, which is apparently being opposed by local activists, despite the fact that the local activists have also opposed efforts to increase the size of the hospital on the existing site, claiming that the shade created by a tall building would darken the character of the neighbourhood. You see? By blinding locals with this high-wattage monstrosity, the government will not only make West Enders craving for the relative darkness of a tower, but justify the building of additional dams to generate electricity, which is in higher demand for some inexplicable reason.

Here’s an idea for next year’s campaign: promise local residents that the Christmas scaffolding won’t be erected if sufficient funds are raised by November 15th. Even I would contribute to that worthy goal!

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It’s a good thing that I’m technically homeless right now and taking assorted house-sitting gigs. My transience will make it more difficult for George Bush’s B1 bombers to find me.

Did you catch the news today? According to the Daily Mirror (as reported by the Globe and Mail), immediate-past-empire Prime Minister Tony Blair talked current-empire President George W. Bush out of bombing the Al-Jazeera offices in Qatar. The U.S. government thinks that the Al-Jazeera television station promotes anti-U.S. sentiments. Al-Jazeera offices in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been “accidentally” bombed by the US military.

Even Frank Magazine didn’t face that kind of hostility from Brian Mulroney.

Attention CIA: The Calgary building shown in the centre (sorry – center) of this satellite photo has a sign out front that says “Conservative Party of Canada”, but it’s really a front for Al Jazeera in Canada. Use the information as you will.

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To the piteous woman in the silver mini-van in Pitt Meadows, who honked at me, shook her fist, and exposed me to the most hatred filled countenance I’ve seen since ‘Dawn of the Dead’:

After you roared up behind me, you had to wait five seconds for me to turn right before you could charge past. Five whole seconds! Was that really such an imposition on your life? Was Wal-Mart holding a time-limited sale on plastic Adirondack patio chairs that you just couldn’t miss? I realise that life in the suburbs can be dreary for a Jesus-whipped ex-cheerleader, but that’s no reason to take out your hostility on unsuspecting cyclists. Does the phrase ’share the road’ ring a bell?

By the way – love the hair! Who’s your topiarist?

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I, Edward, defender of forests, eater of soy products, and catcher-releaser of bathtub spiders, have brutalized to the point of death one small, defenseless mouse.

I was coming home from school, about to put the key in the front door of my abode-of-the-week, when a small mouse ran past my foot. Before any thoughts could be presented to my frontal cortex, some long suppressed instinct, perhaps, leapt from the depths of my evolutionary filing cabinet and gave it a quick kick. It flew up and smacked against the wall, fell to the ground, and lay on its back, legs twitching in the air, clearly badly injured. About then my liberal concern reappeared, and in a moment of clarity I knew what the proper course of action was.

I stepped on it, ending its misery, and kicked it into the garden. Then I went into the house and had lunch.

Oh well, better that quick death than a long, slow death on one of those hellishly torturous sticky pads.

Speaking of senseless violence and callous disregard for life, I see in the news that the United States Senate this morning voted 97-0 to provide George W. Bush with another $50 billion with which to prosecute his war on terror, bringing the total official cost of this project to $350 billion. That’s $350,000,000,000.00!

However, it is not just the unimaginable sum of money that astounds me, but that the senate vote was unanimous. Every single Democratic senator – and there are some 44 of them – voted in favour of the bill, except one, who did not vote. If this is an example of the official opposition to George Bush, America is in worse shape than I thought.

A few facts:

• Budget projections from the White House show that, by 2010, the annual military budget will have risen to $485 billion (Apparently the war on terror is expected to last a while.)
• Total military budget (estimated using White House projections) for George W. Bush’s presidency: $3.19 trillion ($12,000.00 or so per American).
• Total US budget expense for 2005: $ 2.48 trillion
• Total US budget revenue for 2005: $ 1.49 trillion
• Total 2005 Deficit: -$ 987 billion
• Total US Federal debt (to Oct08/05) $7,983,343,398,770.02 (That’s almost $8 trillion)
• Biggest US defense contractor: Lockheed Martin
• Estimated annual revenue that defense contractor Lockheed Martin receives from the federal treasury: $23.7 billion
• Corporation that Bush, as Governor of Texas, reportedly tried to give a contract to run the Texas welfare system before he had to relent in the face of public protests and an unfavorable regulatory ruling by the Clinton administration: Lockheed Martin
• Corporation whose VP was apparently a finance chair of the 2000 Bush for President campaign: Lockheed Martin
• Estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war on terror to date: 26,323
• Cost to kill each Iraqi: $13.3 million
• Barrels of Iraqi oil imported to the US every day: 615,000
• Barrels of Canadian oil imported to the US every day: 1,624,000
• Estimated cost to kill all Canadians, should we become a threat to the US oil supply: $398 trillion

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Well, I am now in my second week of school. In some ways it’s like being back in high school, except for the absence of physical violence, insane faculty and puberty-driven angst. There are more than a few first year students who still haven’t left the high (or even junior high) school mindset behind, though I’m sure they’ll start getting over it once they’ve had their first grade report.

One of the more common annoyances are students who consistently come to class late, who not only interrupt the lecture with their arrival, but some of whom are oblivious enough to make five minutes worth of noise as they get settled. And let’s not forget cell phones – the last time I was in school, these didn’t even exist, except in the shoe of an inept television spy. In fact, we still had a black rotary phone at home when I graduated.

Another thing that irks me is the speed at which some students travel through the halls. Wandering through life in an apathetic stupor seems to be an epidemic only slightly more prevalent than gathering to chat in front of doorways and at the top of flights of stairs.

Oh well. I can imagine what I was like at 17, so perhaps this is just the revenge of the gods.

As expected, I am something of a geriatric, in relative terms. Not only am I older than everyone in all of my classes, I suspect that I am also older than all of my instructors, including my philosophy instructor, who holds a PhD. However, I actually find it all very amusing. While my neighbours have earphones dangling from their collars, Hello Kitty! pencil cases, or designer clothes and hair, and chat about boy bands or muscle cars, I read the Globe and Mail and peer over the rims of my glasses at them curiously. They are not all eighteen, though. My philosophy class has a few old timers that are in their upper 20’s.

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Now that I am back in Vancouver, I need to find a home. Being the frugal sort, I’m looking for something fairly economical – the less I pay in rent, the less I’ll feel the need to earn money.

One thing I’ve noticed at this end of the socio-economic spectrum is that anyone with a cold, dark, mouldy basement that you wouldn’t expect your dog to live in can go out and buy a sink and put the space on the market for $700 a month. And people will pay it! It is quite apparent that there is no government inspection process or licensing system for proprietors of “illegal suites”. One basement suite, advertised as being in “Shaughnessy”, has a bathroom with a 5′8″ ceiling height. Can you imagine having a shower? I’d only get wet from the waist down unless I bathed on my knees. And then my head would still be dry.

As previously discussed, I can be a bit of a snob at times, and I often have to go through the classified ads several times to talk myself into considering ads that I’d rejected on first pass. However, one ad that I can guarantee that I won’t be responding to read:

if you are a movie lover you gonna feel right at home. I am getting a home theather system with a projector, and already got sattelite tv with 10+ movie channels. ADSL because we all need fast internet, and you get computer tech support for free coz im a computer buff. Oh yeah did i mention the beach/seawall is 15 steps away if you like more active things or just enjoying the sunshine.

The search continues. If you are aware of an available space that would suit me and my budget, do let me know.

At the moment I am staying with Grant and Jerry out at Main & 30th, which is more or less the area in which I hope to live. I don’t know what it is with this summer, but I’m having the most bizarre pet experiences. First it was pilling Ben and Carol’s cats, then examining the fecal output of Colin’s puppies. Now, as Grant and Jerry have taken off to a Bowen Island dinner party for the night, I’ve been left in charge of three cats and a baby squirrel. If you recall from one of my first blog entries back in May, a baby squirrel fell down the chimney. The guys decided to raise it, and named it “JJ”.

As JJ grew, it used to go out in the morning, to do whatever squirrels do all day, but would always come back in the evening for a dinner of pine nuts and it’s own cushy bed. No squirrel ever had it so good, but eventually JJ did not return. Perhaps he met a mate and is now building a nest in someone else’s chimney. Or perhaps he found a nice woodpecker hole in which to live. Or maybe a cat ate him. Anyway, he never came back.

Shortly thereafter, though, another baby squirrel fell down the chimney. Personally, I’d throw some chicken wire over the top of the chimney and light a roaring fire, but I think Grant secretly likes being stepmother to wayward rodents. This one they have named “GJ” (what’s wrong with “Chip”, or “Dale”?). They feed it warmed baby pablum and pine nuts, with a bit of fruit for variety, or roughage or something. Well, since they are away and Doctor Dolittle doesn’t make housecalls, guess who gets to look after the twice-daily feedings?

Tonight was my first attempt to feed GJ. As instructed, I heated the pablum to 98.6 degrees, put a towel in my lap, grabbed the squirrel and tried to stick a hypodermic syringe (sans needle) filled with strained mush into its mouth. I was only wearing a pair of shorts at the time (I’d forgotten instruction number three: wear a shirt), and the little bugger broke free, ran up my chest and sat on my head, twitching.

After putting on a thick flannel shirt, I tried again. Eventually I got the syringe in his mouth and he ate the goop as I slowly squeezed the plunger. After a few of those, I fed him some pine nuts, gave him fresh water, and sent him back to bed.

Remember when house sitting just involved bringing in the mail and watering the aspidistra?

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Well, I had a great time in Costa Rica and Panama, and I’m very grateful to Colin & Roberto for being such generous hosts. Though I feel like I could have kept travelling indefinitely, I am glad to be home to see my friends, and start school next week.

As soon as I arrived home I went out to Ruskin for my grandmothers 92nd birthday. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, they had already taken her home. However, I did stay and visit Phillip and Elaine on the farm for a few days. This was a bit of a change from my lifestyle of the past few weeks. It’s a 65km bike ride to the farm, which is no problem but a change from my recent slothfulness. I wasn’t as out of shape as I thought, though, as I made it out in about three hours.

There is never any shortage of projects at the farm, and I enjoy the physical work that they require. It’s a refreshing change from such day to day exertions such as sitting, staring, breathing and typing. I got my moneys worth this visit, though, as the current project is to reinforce the banks of the main creek that runs through the property. This involved hauling wheelbarrow loads of granite rocks from the main pile out to the edge of the creek “valley”, across a log bridge, down an embankment at the bottom of which is a sharp right turn, and then up a sandy trail to the work site. After numerous loads, it started to rain more heavily than I’ve ever seen it rain in greater Vancouver, followed by a good supply of hail. As we were taking a tea break, a rare flash flood ensued, causing the stream to overflow it’s banks. The water, following a path of least resistance, found it’s way across the Allouette chicken yard to the basement stairs and created a waterfall into the egg room, sending us into damage control. Once that was done, we went back to the creek to find some of our previous work damaged and new damage downstream. The hauling of rocks soon seemed like Stalin’s Siberian gulags, except with regular coffee breaks.

Despite the hard labour, I was very well fed, and by the time I cycled back to Vancouver this morning, I felt quite strong and healthy again. There’s nothing like a little hard work to make you feel like a new man (unless of course you’re doing it for some multi-national corporation).

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Well, here I am on my second last day in Costa Rica before I fly home, laying in the hammock and sipping tea, with light and pleasant thoughts rippling through my head, such as current US attempts to interfere in Canadian sovereignty.

Perhaps you’ve read of the request to extradite Marc Emery for mailing marijuana seeds to US addresses? Or the intention to confiscate the Canadian land under which a tunnel was built leading to the US border?

Whatever you think of marijuana, Marc Emery, or the tunnelers – if any laws have been broken in Canada by Canadians, then it is up to Canada to prosecute those crimes if, when, and how we choose. Extraditing Emery for mailing seeds would be akin (in principle if not in severity) to extraditing a Canadian on the charge of littering when his kite string breaks and the kite lands on US soil.

These events, combined with recent US decisions on softwood and beef, should give Canadians reason to reconsider our participation in NAFTA. Approaching the EU for increased trade might be in order.

In the meantime, I’m having a daydream in which all Canadians obtain marijuana seeds and mail them to George Bush. If just 50% of Canadians did so, old George would have another 15 million extradition requests to fill out.

President George Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

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For those of you Canadians who find the prospect of a privatised medical system in Canada appealling, check out the experience of my friend Garry Johnson in Hawaii, who recently had to go to emergency for a throat absess:

ER visit total: $145 user fees.
Family doctor visits and labs and medications: $111 user fees.
Specialist visit and follow up: $72 user fees.
Total so far: $318 in user fees, for a sore throat!

PS: I work at the hospital where I was treated and I have the best health care insurance possible. Still think the Canadian health care system sucks? At least it’s not sucking money out of your wallet!

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On Tuesday I was out canoeing on the canals between 5:30 and 11:30. There were seven of us, plus our guide, Barbara Hartung.
Barbara is a great guide as she can name every bird, reptile, bug and plant found in the area (either that or she’s really a talented fraud who can whip off convincing sounding names without hesitation). Because we were traveling by canoe (and because there were only Europeans and one Canadian on board) we were able to slip through the water very quietly, and I was able to approach a number of birds and caimans closely enough to get very clear, close photographs, including three different kinds of heron, an Anhinga and a Jacana.

I had turned off the auto focus (to reduce noise) and set the shutter speed to manual, but unfortunately I unknowingly also set the aperture to manual, which means that all of the pictures on that roll were taken with the aperture set to F4. Thus, some or all of the photos will likely be overexposed.

Now, I’m forced to compare this tour with the one in Panama. Rather than Americans, I shared the tour with two Netherlanders, two Germans and two French. All were impeccably behaved and thoroughly interested in learning about their surroundings, which made for a very pleasant tour.

Interestingly, each of the three couples, separately, asked me the same question through the day: “What do Canadians think of George W. Bush?”. They all asked this question casually without revealing their own biases (though their biases were pretty self-evident since they were even asking). When I explained that most Canadians, except for a few in Red Deer and Penticton, despised Bush, a feeling that was only being exacerbated by the Free Trade problems with softwood lumber, they looked relieved and we were able to share much complementary disdain for Bush’s America.

The Dutch couple were my favourite. I have met Dutch travelers in numerous places over the years, from Costa Rica to Krakow to Saturna Island, and I have yet to meet one that I don’t like. They are consistently the loveliest, gentlest, most thoughtful and intelligent people you’ll meet. Even uptight, suburban, nouveau-riche Dutch are usually polite, soft-spoken and respectful of others. Maybe it’s time for another visit to Utrecht.

In the afternoon, following a very late breakfast of indigestible eggs and bread that had been waved briefly over an under-heated toaster, we set out for a hike in the jungle. There we were able to observe Spider and Howler monkeys, many spiders, beetles and small lizards, a couple of brightly coloured poisonous vipers, a number of birds (including a Great Pootoo), and many fascinating plants and trees.

This morning, I caught a lancha to the coastal town of Moin, near Limon, where buses took me back to Puerto Viejo. I am now at Colin’s and Roberto’s place again, catching up on the local developments during my absence.

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