Entries from July 2006

Hi, I'm your friendly Coriolibot (as in "ro-bot").

It would seem Vince (shame on him) hasn't posted a fresh entry in a couple of days, so I am here to keep you entertained no matter what!

The post below is a random entry that we hope you haven't read before. Regular current entries follow. Enjoy, and come back soon for brand new posts!

Note: this random entry is served on a per-visit basis and will change if you reload the page. It will also not show up on regular RSS, Feedburner and Twitter feeds.

Jun 5
   Vintage! This is a random post. The year was 2005...

The soaring fool is airborne again

It had been almost a year since I’d left the ground under my canopy, like a flea hoping off the back of an elephant. Now, that’s way too long.

So today I drove an hour east of Montreal to the mighty Mont Yamaska, a small hiccup on the flat expanse of the Eastern Townships, hoping for flyable conditions. It was a partial success. The winds were a little weak, from the southwest, facing the main launch pad. After waiting over an hour for some thermal activity to come our way, I decided that walking back down was not an option, mostly because of the black flies swarming around my face. I unpacked my paraglider, hooked up to the harness, put gloves and helmet on, strapped the vario to my leg, and waited some more.

There’s a lot to be said about waiting in the paragliding activity. It forms character. It teaches patience. It lets you sweat profusely and makes you wish you were somewhere else. Like at the shaded terrace of an alpine cafe with a beer mug in one hand and an ice cream in the other. Or vice versa. And then it gives the bugs a chance to fly suicide missions into your ears.

Here’s how I would define the essence of aerial wisdom:

Success is the result of good judgment.
Good judgment is the result of experience.
Experience is the result of bad judgment.
Bad judgment is the result of black flies.

I once took off against my own advice from this very same site, in a fierce crosswind and without my speed bar, only to find myself flying backwards as soon as I was airborne. But today the gods were smiling upon me and finally, the sun appeared through the clouds, triggering a few thermals that lazily ascended the hill towards my vanishing patience. Four or five wings launched, I was next, a few more followed.

We managed to soar for a while, fighting hard to gain a mere 200 or 300 feet above the pad, turning tight to stay in the lift at each end of the run. Then the sun went away again, and sinking air was everywhere. I headed for the field, crossed the road, followed an S shaped approach and didn’t quite flare enough while landing, so I actually had to run a few paces. A year is a long time to wait for a twenty minutes flight. But how sweet it was!

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2005-06-05 20:03 • Posted in Cool: 1 Comment » Toggle display • Reply
We now go back to current chronological entries:
Jul 16

The Zidanie - Part 8,700,456,674.3b

The Zidanie continues. It gets funnier and funnier. Check out my sister’s link to a hilarious collection of national interpretations of the incident.

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2006-07-16 01:15 • Posted in ICMOL: No comments yet »  Post one!
Jul 14

14 juillet - The Zidanie rebounds once more ~

You’d better believe it. Here’s the latest from FIFA, where people have apparently decided that the beast cannot yet be put to rest. It seems the whole story might take another stunning turn...

En tout cas, bonne fête des pharmaciens à tous et toutes! )french

Quoi?, Ben oui, aujourd’hui on célèbre la prise de la pastille, non? ;-)

 

2006-07-14 09:51 • Posted in Bits and pieces: 4 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 12

My last "Zidanie" post ~

Updated July 13th

What a saga! Some are calling him a villain and want to crucify him, for others he’s just a fool, and yet the vast majority seems to sympathize. Zidane was one of the best, the stuff of legends, and idols die hard. The Pravda has gone as far as saying: « Seul un héros épique, un titan, un Hercule pouvait partir comme ça. » (French translation of the Russian text found somewhere on the web) !

In a series of inconclusive interviews, he apologized to the youth for being a bad example, refused to regret his act because that would mean accepting what was done to him, gave clues to what was actually said without quoting or being specific and finally, insisted on the need to not only punish the infraction but also the provocation.

But one thing is for sure, his little stunt has earned Zizou a strange reward: he’s managed to involuntarily steal the fame away from the Italians! Their World Cup victory was short lived, at least outside of Italy, and the world headlines have mostly been concentrating on the headbutt case, and most of all, the « Why, and what was said? ».

Not a bad way to go after all. Who on Earth, apart from rotten politicians and the like, can claim to have had so much written and said about them for just a mere 15 seconds caught by a lucky camera?

Or was it luck? After all, and this is the question I have been asking myself since the beginning, since the first replay of the incident during the game: how incredible a coincidence that there happened to be a camera (or better, two, judging by the different angles on that infamous video sequence) trained on Zidane, ready to record the action?

What were the odds of having a cameraman follow players not involved with the ball, 10 minutes from the end of a tied World Cup final? My guess is: pretty slim, next to none. At that stage, if I was a cameraman, I’d be glued to the ball. Yet some weren’t. Why?

Hehe, just my own grain of salt on an already very salty pizza… ;-) But when the dust settles, il faudra bien rendre à Zidane ce qui appartient à Zidane: il a(vait) le génie du ballon.

All right, now, all jokes aside. For those of you who really want to know what was said on the football field, here’s what the lip-readers of many nations combined have finally concluded; it’s quite sad, but such is life:

- Materazzi (holding Zidane from behind): Sorry man, I thought you had your comb with you. With all the Cup stress, I’m starting to loose my hair.

- Zidane (walking alongside Materazzizxme): Yeah, tell me about it. My hair is falling too. Especially on the top of my head.

- Maserati: Well, don’t worry, you’re still sexy, old buddy.

- Zidane (passing Mazettequati): No, seriously man, the top of my head is about bold.

- Maquettezazi: Really?

- Zidane (turning around and walking back towards Materreazil): I’m telling you, look!

(Zidane lowers his head to show Materacils, but steps on his own shoelace and trips forward. The rest is history.)

(Later, the referee - who was actually wearing hair implants himself - having heard the story from his sidekick, felt sorry for Zidane and went back to see him, handing him the red business card of his hair clinic. You can actually see Zidane squeezing the referee’s shoulder while he’s thanking him.) ;-)

 

2006-07-12 18:31 • Posted in Bits and pieces: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 12

Zidane has spoken ~

The French Captain finally broke the silence and explained himself on a Canal+ interview an hour ago. Get the highlights. (It’s in French. What did you expect?) ;-)

 

2006-07-12 12:45 • Posted in Bits and pieces: 1 Comment » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 9

In the news these day ~

• France lost the World Cup to Italy yesterday in a penalty shoot out, a very disappointing outcome to a game I saw as mostly dominated by the French. But something most incredible happened towards the end and cursed their team: Zidane lost his cool and, for a reason so far unknown, head butted an Italian defender in the chest. He was red-carded and his exit from the field marked, in my opinion, the beginning of the end. Why he would do that remains a mystery. I understand the players are under tremendous pressure but his move looked calm and almost premeditated. Oh well, it’s just a game. However the worldwide Italian ego has just been inflated one notch. And as for the French ego, well, it’s always inflated. ;-)

• Et puis I just finished reading Loin de quoi?, de Laurent Sagalovitsch. Disappointing. I had expected much more. Granted, his initial description of Vancouver is quite funny and dead on. But he runs out of things to say very early in the book and the end gets quite repetitive, especially considering his particular style where every single rule of classical grammar is broken.

The first chapter strikes you as innovative and daring, reminiscent of Vian and Barjavel with its long descriptions and endless collection of adjectives. But the lack of final punctuation (i.e. the mighty Period, which should act as the conductor of this opera of words) soon begins to be tiresome and what was daring becomes plain and simple boring. (Sadly, I no longer have the book in hand to actually count, but some sentences were longer than a page or two. Not my cup of tea.)

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is out and I visited the Burrard Street Paramount last night for the 10:30 pm show. Another disappointment, somewhat expected this time. I’d figured it would be very hard to live up to the first jewel of a movie. In The Curse of the Black Pearl, Johnny Depp was sublime, having invented himself a character that was so unorthodox that only he could have pulled it off. In the sequel he merely tries to stay true to it, donning the Jack Sparrow role on like an old costume. Pardon me, Captain Jack Sparrow. He doesn’t even seem to believe in his old joke when he asks « But why is the rum always gone? »

The other characters are weaker too, or as Commodore Norrington would have put it, bleak. They used to be inspired, now they are just well paid. The new villains are even creepier, the special effects slimier and the story ends up in the air, not even pretending to hide the fact that we have to go see the third part. The only things worth mentioning in my humble opinion would be Bill Nighy (Underworld’s Viktor) as Davy Jones, still charismatic underneath his appendages and Keira Knightley, stealing the lead role with her sheer beauty, if nothing else.

Worth noting was the DVS (Descriptive Video System) system for the hearing impaired, which I saw in action for the first time. Paramount has equipped some of its theaters nationwide with a select number of translucent acrylic reflectors on a gooseneck stand that fits into the drink holder on the armrest. A light-emitting diode panel matted on the back wall of the theatre displays in mirror image the movie’s dialogue in clear words on the reflector, one or two sentences at a time. Very cool new gadget.

• Another much less publicized movie has also caught my attention. Being released on July 14th, it is called Peaceful Warrior and is based on Dan Millman’s novel The way of the Peaceful Warrior, which I read – many times – back in the early eighties. It should be interesting to see how such a book will adapt into a non-blockbuster movie.

• And after a second – and this time complete – viewing of Chocolat yesterday, I must admit that the movie, however predictable, touched and inspired me. Isn’t life just as predictable, when we look at the bigger picture? In fact I’d say predictability was Lasse Hallström’s goal, since he was dealing with common human issues and solutions that aren’t extraordinary but rather simple.

« But still the clever north wind was not satisfied. It spoke of towns yet to be visited, friends in need yet to be discovered, battles yet to be fought. » How well I know that wind…

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2006-07-09 20:12 • Posted in Bits and pieces: & Reviews: 8 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 8

Urban transparency ~

1500 meters above sea level. 20 km from Vancouver. 360 degrees of unobstructed magnificent view. I was sitting up high on a ridge next to a granite tower called the West Lion, resting. Hiking up from Lions Bay, I’d had over three hours to reflect on the contrast between the city and up there.

Since leaving the main road, I’d had the singular sensation that Mother Nature was dutifully looking at me. I had become an integral part of the landscape and my presence there hadn’t gone unnoticed. Birds had been suddenly quieting as I approached through the trees and had waited for me to be gone to resume their song. Later, anybody looking up from the bottom of the trail would probably have spotted the bright orange spot of my pants up high in the snow field, moving slowly and seemingly erratically. The silly song I’d been singing out loud when nearing the crest had echoed on the stone walls and had bounced back at me as if the cliff and I had formed a duo. I could have, by dropping a single piece of garbage, affected my surroundings tremendously. The mountains had been watching me curiously. A small speck of color in an immense picture, with a part to play that was inversely proportional to the relative size of my presence.

[June 20th, hiking up to the Lions]

But down in the city, it’s a whole different story. After six months in Vancouver, I have finally begun to understand a key fact about living an urban life.

The fact is I am at risk of slowly becoming transparent, and blind.

And while I accept the first as fatality, I refuse to let the latter happen. They both seem, however, to be a somehow inescapable consequence of an urban lifestyle.

For instance, I often feel like, having reached the apogee of my appreciation of beauty, beauty itself no longer sees me. I am transparent to her, she looks right through me at other sharper silhouettes.

« I can stand all night, at a red light anywhere in town,
Hailing maries left and right, but none of them slow down. » [The Sisters of Mercy]
« I can cross a street, through the heaviest traffic attack,
Splitting up the flow of cars; behind me they join back. » [The Brother Vinnie]

I can drop garbage on the sidewalk or put it in an overflowing garbage can, it’ll make no difference. I can ignore people around me and they ignore me back. I can melt into the crowd or try to stand out, the result is the same.

My presence has no direct impact, I am transparent. Transparency doesn’t bother me; it’s pure and simple. I’d rather be looked through than block the view towards magnificent scenery. But what nostalgia it carries! One never feels ready to leave the stage.

Blindness, however, is another story. I’ll fight it till the end.

It creeps up insidiously from the deepest places and tries to take over my senses. It wants to protect me from scenes of extreme poverty. It wants to pinch my nostrils against aggressive smells. It tries to block my ears when the city is too loud, horns and fire engines and trucks. It wants to make sure I don’t get hurt by too many strangers walking past me as if I didn’t exist. It attempts to keep my eyes at ground level because nobody else walks in the street with their head up looking at the skyscrapers. It would like to make me believe the mountains will forever be hidden in the clouds.

And if I let it, it will succeed. It does on most everybody around me. And yet Vancouver is one of the cities I know with the least amount of human blindness. It’s a last line of defense against it, an ultimate fortress flying high in the sky the flag of enjoying life and appreciating beauty.

But it’s only a matter of time before even here, one succumbs to such a powerful sorcery, the spell of blindness. And reopening one’s eyes of the mind and heart once they have gone shut must be so difficult…

Granted, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But maybe it’s also embedded deep into the very essence of each thing and person. To be blind, then, would be labeling our world as ugly or beautiful, without allowing for context.

Without allowing for the fact that sometimes, when we look at something or someone in a judgmental way, we might be unknowingly looking through several layers of people and things that have become transparent to us. Although invisible, they distort our perception and affect our vision. In the end, Saint-Ex’ summed it all up so well; we only see well with our heart, what’s essential is invisible to the eyes.

I’ll try to keep looking around me with amazed eyes, forever, no matter where I am. If my eyes go blind, then I will look with my heart. But if my heart grows cold, I’ll turn to stone, and then to glass. Maybe they’ll make a statue out of me. He who once saw beauty. Look through but please don’t touch. Climbing on the statue is forbidden. Keep your dogs on leash. This is not a lamp post.

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2006-07-08 19:52 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime: 1 Comment » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 6

The hunter ~

I know this is a bit redundant since I just added two of these photos to the Black & White gallery; but I really like them and wanted to explain what they are. The sequence was taken from the Seawall, near Siwash Rock, while waiting for the July 1st fireworks. Of course, I used a tripod and exposed for 6 to 8 seconds at max. aperture and a 50 ASA setting, with my dear G3. The local time was around 10:15 pm, or about an hour after sunset. It’s amazing how much light a long exposure will manage to discover and use, since I could barely see the heron with my naked eye in the darkness, and had to focus manually to an arbitrary distance, the camera refusing to focus by itself. On one of the pictures, the heron has a redish face and more details are visible; that effect was the result of a camera flash from a couple of passers-by. Thank god, the beautiful bird must have had Egyptian parents: he always gave me a near perfect profile!

02-12-08 Update: the site’s URL and image locations have since changed. The new B&W gallery is located here.

Defined tags for this entry: ,

 

2006-07-06 17:25 • Posted in Photoblogs: 5 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 4

The new Black & White gallery is up ~

Featuring Lightbox JS v.2.02 as a slideshow script and the OpenCube Infinite Menus, the new gallery is a collection of black & white photographs of various origin and age. Some are from Vancouver and have been featured on the blog, others are older, and others yet were even taken originally as colour photographs. I’ve worked hard to solve a few browser compatibility issues with my page design, but Mac’s behaviour is - as usual - unknown. I’d appreciate any feedback from any platform users...

I’m ashamed to say that for now, the slideshow is optimized for screen resolutions of at least 1680x1050 since most of my vertical pictures are 700px or 750px. I know that most of you are using 1024x768 and I apologize in advance. I will eventually work on a resizing option, but for now, your images will be a little cropped...

02-12-08 Update: Lightbox is no longer feature since the site redesign. The black and white gallery is now powered by Flash and available here.

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2006-07-04 21:18 • Posted in Bits and pieces: 1 Comment » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 2

First of July fireworks ~

Long week-end. National holiday. Postcard-perfect weather. Sunny skies, happy people. Warm evenings. Street festivals. It’s all flashing before my eyes as I observe and take part simultaneously.

Last night, Saturday night, I took a slow bike ride around False Creek. I watched the sun go down slowly in a cloudless sky. The Seawall was alive, people strolling everywhere, enjoying summer and the Canada Day celebrations.

When I got a little beyond Siwash Rock, just before the Lions Gate Bridge, I stopped, setup the tripod and waited for the West Van’ fireworks.

As darkness fell, herons were flying around and landing on rocks in front of me, not yet ready to sleep, still hungry and busy. I got a few awesome shots of them, which will constitute a post of their own, soon.

Then the fireworks erupted in the western sky and the camera and I went wild.

And today, as the morning already felt hot, I made a late decision to go for a swim in Lynn Creek. Of course, this being Canada Day’s Sunday, I wasn’t exactly alone up there. But Lynn Canyon is a secret still well kept and the crowd was bearable.

The turquoise water, being still quite cold, kept most people on the shore rocks and I had the « pool » pretty much to myself.

First swim in natural water since I visited Vancouver last August and went for a swim in Victoria’s Sooke river. It was about time and felt incredibly good. All the dogs present agreed. What a shame for them to be color blind. But I guess at least I haven’t gone blind to beauty myself. Yet. See next post.

Defined tags for this entry: ,

 

2006-07-02 20:38 • Posted in Photoblogs: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply
Jul 1

France defeats Brazil on Canada Day ~

There were a lot of very sad Brazilian students in the Vancouver streets today, after their team lost to France 0-1 in the FIFA World Cup. I’m not one to praise commercial sports too much, but still, as Numérobis would say, « Ça fait plaisir. » France advances to the semi-finals and will play against Portugal. They seem to have found a new rhythm and have definitely regained the full support of their fans. Good for them.

I totally enjoy the World Cup because it’s the one thing, with the Olympic Games, that the whole world watches and that hasn’t got anything to do with war or catastrophes. People are glued to their TVs all around the planet, no matter what time of the day, in bush villages, mountain pueblos, major cities and farms everywhere. Football is the one thing pretty much all races have in common, and as such it creates bonds and draws bridges.

I remember playing an improvised football game on an uneven and bare grazing field, on the Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo, locals against crew members, barefoot, near a village that didn’t even have electricity. The locals spoke a few words of English, but those were not needed. The game is a language by itself.

Any way, allez les bleus! Enfin, les blancs.

Photo (C) FIFA

Defined tags for this entry:

 

2006-07-01 20:05 • Posted in Cool: 1 Comment » Toggle display • Reply
previous page
(Page 2 of 2, totaling 20 entries)