Silicon Valley

Holy moly depressing Batman. I was in the Silicon Valley this week for work (Santa Clara to be exact). I have never seen so many buildings left empty, for lease/sale, deserted parking lots...The place seriously looked like Armageddon. My taxi driver was a former engineer at Oracle and the guy who fixed the air conditioning in a colleague’s room was a former tech writer for Citrix who was recently let go. I remember when friends of mine flocked down to Silicon Valley for awesome tech jobs, now I see why they have all migrated back to Canada. It just goes to show that this recession is either here or imminent.

San Francisco

I had to fly down to California for work so I booked an early flight and hung out in the big city with my pal Yas aka the best SF tour guide. I rode into town on the BART and met up with Yas in her wicked Mexican Mission area neighbourhood. We wandered the shops around Haight-Ashbury and checked out the local parks. We made it over to Golden Gate Park and as Yas predicted, we were offered drugs within the first 10 feet of hippie hill. Some guy wandered up with a huge wad of weed and some other guy shouted out something about white girls and marriage proposals. I enjoyed soaking up some rays and even got a little sunburn. I love this town.

East Side Girl observations

Well, we are moved in and somewhat settled. Our new neighbours rock, everyone in this building is genuinely friendly and welcoming. Things that are different so far though:

- In the West Side, all money transactions are done with credit/debit cards. In the East Side, they like to pay for everything with cash: preferably nickels, dimes and pennies. Takes for friggin’ ever!

- The majority of people here dress like they just rolled out of bed. In the West Side, people dressed up even to take out the garbage. In the East Side you can walk around in your pj’s with smeared mascara under your eyes and no one seems to notice.

- You can park on residential streets in the East Side and not worry that you will be towed for sporting the wrong colour triangle on your windshield…oh how I hated Kits people who thought they could park in the West End, the nerve of some people!

- In the East Side, people pick up their dogs crap, not so in the West Side…no, people are far too chi chi to scoop that off the sidewalk.

No more West End girl

Well it’s official. We sold our condo in the West End and have moved East Side (barely though as people keep telling me, only by 1 block). It is truly the end of an era. I will miss the Sea Wall, my upstairs neighbor Jodi, Punchy and his blankie, Punchy wielding his can of Wildcat while looking menacingly at pedestrians, being able to walk to work and the safety of being in the Gaybourhood. Oh well, it’ll all be good in the new hood I am sure.

BC Ferries advertising

We were watching the hockey game and noticed a BC Ferries ad by the Canucks bench. Why the fuck is BC Ferries wasting money on advertising? It’s not like you can take a different ferry company over to the island, BC Ferries is a monopoly. How about spending that advertising (aka tax payer's) money to improve your services or lower fares for Christ’s sake; now THAT would actually make sense!

Overheard at the office

Says my cube mate this morning: "I fell asleep with mini pizzas in the oven last night. I woke up because my landlady was banging on my door. Now all my clothes smell like burnt mini pizza".

Woe is the Couv

The rains were biblical last night. Pretty much every hobo in the West End sought shelter near our building around 4am and I could hear them scrapping over bottles, carts and dry, covered space. I woke up extremely tired and cranky and then realized that the biblical rains had also turned our usually yummy Vancouver water, brown. Yeccch not again*rolls eyes*

Oink oink goes the pig

If you partake in the pleasure that is your office kitchen (the fridge, sink, microwave, etc.), here are some ground rules:

* If you leave evidence of your presence, clean it up. It’s really not all that difficult. Stop leaving your dishes in the sink for someone else to clean up, your mother does not live here and if she did, she says ‘you’re an adult, stop living like a pig!’

* Seriously, stop microwaving fish in the microwave, it stinks!!

* Your yogurt has been in the fridge for 6 months, please stop keeping your science experiments near my edible food.

* You walk into the kitchen and the kettle is boiling and you didn’t set it. That means, someone is ahead of you in line for hot water so don’t drain the entire kettle for your bucket of hot chocolate, take some and leave the rest…were you raised in a barn?

* Who threw the wash cloth and dish scrubber into the recycling bin this morning? This stuff does not grow on trees and we all use it, don’t be selfish and ruin it for others.

Do I look wealthy to you?

Cheap people piss me off. Some people never seem to have money on them yet feel perfectly comfortable eating, drinking and sharing cabs at the expense of others. The only thing more annoying than a cheap person is a cheap couple. Come on, you all know one…the couple that sits across from you and when the bill arrives, they start whispering to each other and take turns going to the washroom and don't even make an attempt to reach for their wallet. Nice try, cough up your half already. What is up with cheap people? Do they have no dignity and conscience at all?

Energy vampires

I was reading an interesting article about the topic of energy vampires this afternoon. My New Year’s resolution last year was to distance myself from such people and this year’s resolution was to actually stick by it and not take crap from such people. It seems that I had surrounded myself around some very jealous, bitter and downright obnoxious people who did nothing but stress me out. Since shedding said people from my life I have been happier, sleep better at night and don’t miss these handful of people in my life at all. It’s elating to not have someone take you down and make you feel bad for what you have accomplished and instead are supportive and genuine people.

Come undone

Grrrr what is with shoddy clothing these days? I bought a really nice pair of pants from Banana Republic the other day for about 100 bucks. One would think that BR has some nice quality stuff but I wore the pants once and the hems came unraveled already. This happens to all my pants lately, what’s up with that??

Techno fiends

I realise that I live in the Gaybourhood (Davie St. Village area, West End, Vancouver) but can someone please answer me a question that has been bothering me for quite some time? Why do all the businesses on Davie St. blast techno music from every shop at all hours of the day? I have more gay friends than the average person but my friends are not techno-exclusive so why all the friggin' techno? Sometimes it's nice rocking out on a Monday morning at 7:30 to some techno walking by the KFC but come on, can we mix it up a bit already?

The racist rock

So the man and I made the trek out to White Rock to have dinner with friends of ours the other night. I love it out there; you can see the stars (the ones in the sky that is), eat amazing local food, the local liquor store has specials on Mondays...I mean really, the place is pretty damn rad overall. Here's the best part though; Picturesque town and a really cute building, then you get on the elevator in their building and see this racist sign, nice! It cracks me right up, so NOT politically correct only down the road from uber PC Vancouver.

**Yes, this is the actual picture posted in their elevator!

JJ likes

I have several blogs that I read on weekly basis for both inspiration and because I usually need a laugh by mid-week. My new two personal faves are:

Stuff White People Like  

and  Steve Don't Eat It

Ferme ton gorlot!

It was a moment that would have made Pierre Elliott Trudeau proud. A Vancouver hobo was accosting people outside of the Royal Bank on Burrard St. in both of Canada's official languages on my walk home today. It kinda reminded me of of those those Canadian Heritage Moments commercials: the realization of Trudeau’s Official Languages Act.

Campaign trails

I'm on a Rick Mercer kick as of late and he got me thinking about elections. Don’t get me wrong, Canada totally rocks as a nation but I cannot lie; the elections up here are so friggin’ dull compared to what’s going on next door in the good ole’ USA. As Canadians, we love to think of ourselves as one of the world’s most progressive, ethnically diverse nations and yet there's big bad backwards America just over the fence and just look who's running for the big job down there: A woman, a Black man, Nader who claims to be Green (why??), a Mormon with really big hair, and some dude who was in a bamboo cage in Vietnam for 5.5 years. Meanwhile in Canada, we're gearing up for yet another race between a pudgy English white guy economist and a skinny French white guy with glasses and some other white English guy with bad facial hair. I keep seeing my friends go South to help with American election campaigns and I can see why: it’s inspiring, interesting and the times are changing down there while up here in Canada it’s more like same shit, different day.

Who exactly is rocking the vote?

I hadn’t thought about the topic of polls since my days back in university statistics class until the topic came up on the Mercer Report this week. It’s funny how governments do actually make decisions based on these figures and how all of our newspapers use them on a daily basis; but for what really? Who answers the phone when an unknown 1-800 number calls anymore? Every person I know in Vancouver under the age of 30 does not even have a landline anymore, they only have cell phones and pollsters do not call cell phones. So who exactly is taking these polls anyway? 80 year olds and crazy people are my guess. I would love to be polled but it looks like that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Oh well, I'd probably just mess with the pollsters anyway and say that I was voting for the Nudist Gardening Party again cause afterall, anything is better than Mayor Sam Sullivan.

It wasn't me

We truly are in an era of shying away from accepting all personal responsibilities and finding new things to blame our shortcomings on. I cannot tell you how many times I hear people who use their friggin’ horoscope as an excuse for their shoddy behaviour. No, you are not jealous and selfish because you are a Libra, you are just plain mannerless and rude. No, you didn’t cancel plans with me because you are a dual sided Gemini who’s other side must have made the plans with me, you broke the plans because you need a day planner. Grow the hell up already people and stop using your horoscope as a cop out.

Interruptasaurus

Do you not get that your constant interrupting, interjections and general butting in are not only disruptive but also rude? Your eavesdropping skills are not yet finely tuned so you tend to interject with something completely unrelated or self-centered and you pipe up in personal conversations that obviously do not concern you. Here's the funny thing: when people interrupt you, you get pissed and complain about how rude it is to be interrupted. Perhaps you should take the hint already?

RATWAY yogurt

The man and I went to Ratway, errr Safeway yesterday afternoon to pick up a few staple items for our take to work lunches for the week. I picked up my fave: Yoplait creamy yogurt and off we skipped, merrily home. So this morning as I was packing my lunch, I glanced at the expiration date on the container and I realized that Ratway had sold me expired yogurt, MF-ers!. So how many days are too many days when it comes to yogurt expiration dates anyway?? Insight anyone?