Our beautiful city of Vancouver is hosting the Juno awards this year and the streets are packed with live music events leading up to the actual awards ceremony held at GM Place in a few days time.
As an avid listener of CBC Radio One (see my favourite programs on the links to the right!), my daily commute to work in the mornings is filled with intriguing conversations, ideas, hypothesis, and genuine stories told by genuine people with a story worth telling. One of many programs I listen to on Radio One is called Q with Jian Ghomeshi to which I get most of my arts, culture, and entertainment in a digestible two-hour format, commercial free (hey, it’s our NPR!). I listen to his show religiously and always sing along to the opening tune of Q while beating my steering wheel like a drum.
When I heard that Jian was making his way to Vancouver for a special Juno broadcast recording of Q, I was ecstatic and wrote an email to confirm seating to be part of the live studio audience and see him do his thing before my eyes.
So today was it and I was queueing in line with other avid Q listeners while waiting for my friend Jennifer to arrive. The line grew longer and longer as the minutes passed. Jenn showed up right when I was about to walk into the studio, or in other words, in the nick of time. She would have been SOL seconds later!
Like the heart-felt enthusiasm, joy, and happiness from the audience as seen on each opening sequence of The Hour with Strombo, we Vancouverites gave Jian and those who will be listening to the broadcast the following morning, a resounding cheer which grew even louder when he rattled on with who’s on the show: Hawksley Workman, Divine Brown, Bif Naked, Hot Hot Heat, and voices from Vancouver’s cultural milieu.
It was absolutely awesome to be part of a live studio audience for the first time and see how a recording is made with guest interviews and musical performances. I have got to do this more often!
Jay was able to get tickets for himself, Lana, and I to see Verdi's Rigoletto at the Vancouver Opera for this evening's final performance. Sitting at our centre balcony seats, we had a great view of the drama unfolding before us on stage without necessitating the need for opera glasses.
Act one was played out with vibrancy and humour as Rigoletto stole centre stage with his tongue lashing of insults. Gilda also carried the play with finesse while professing her love for the student. Hearing the baritone and the soprano singing their lines brought about true and convincing emotions only the gifted and talented could deliver.
An interesting event took place during intermission in a special meeting room on the lower level. A banner inviting attendees both young and old, geeks and troglodytes, and everyone in between had the words "Twitter" and "FaceBook" on it and those inside were standing around busy texting, talking, and perhaps even vlogging on their new fangled iPhones and Blackberry's while loading up on the complementary assortments of deserts and drinks. Though I have been to a similar gathering in the past with my involvement with the local Macintosh User Group back in the day, this new generation of people with their absurd need for up-to-the-second updates and broadcasts of their and their cronies' happenings and whereabouts astounds me. Not to brand myself as a luddite, but seriously, this FaceBooky-Twittery thing is so silly.
Shockingly, I had recognised a familiar face in the crowd; not a friend, but the older brother of one. Interrupting his text entry and finger flicking on his iPhone, I introduced myself and made small talk before walking back to my seat for act two and three.
As we reached the final act on a sad note, where Rigoletto holds his dying daughter in his arms, the curtain closed and after a brief period of time, a standing ovation. It continued with cheers and whistling until every cast member had their proud moment in the lime light. Jay, Lana, and I were glowing with satisfaction after watching something spectacular as we poured out onto the streets of Vancouver. Singing to the tune of La Donna è mobile as we meandered our way back home was unavoidable.
On my visit to the dentist on the fortuitous Friday of February 13th, I went in for my regularly scheduled cleaning and check-up. I came out of it with a report that two new cavities were found in my upper molars just under the gum line on my 17 and 27. Despite the time and care I had spent brushing and mouth-washing every night and with my knowledge of how important it is to maintain good oral hygiene from working in a dental lab, I still managed to get not one, but two cavities. The curse of the Friday Thirteenth!
As I inquired about booking the next available time slot for me to come in again to fill those cavities up, March thirteenth came up on screen. Yes, another fortuitous Friday the Thirteenth. I'm not joking. Flip your calendar back to February thirteenth and March thirteenth of two-thousand-and-nine and you will see that they both fall on a Friday. I went ahead and booked it.
Here I am tonight writing about the result of my second visit to the dentist and I'm happy to report that it all went splendiferously well. I also learned that it was extremely difficult to fill those cavities in because of the position it was in, tightly wedged with hardly any clearance for a dental apparatus, let alone a toothbrush, without hitting my jaw bone. It was impossible to get in when I had my mouth open so contrary to the common "open-wide" request, I had to close it while still leaving just enough space to work with.
Here's hoping that I won't be developing cavities on 37 and 47, or anywhere else for that matter. Ever again.
Shortly after my trip to San Francisco, I was off again, this time for a dental conference in Chicago. For the first time, I took a flight from YVR to SEA which was only about a 30 minute trip. From SEA, I took a connecting Alaskan Airlines flight to ORD which left nearly three hours behind schedule due to a thunder storm in Chicago.
In a holding pattern with a number of other planes circulating around O'Hare International Airport like eagles in the sky, I had witnessed outside my port hole window, a spectacular beauty of Chicago's nightscape from above. Like a circuitry on a microchip, an expansive view of orange street lights below outlined its network of carriageways cris-crossing each other. Larger thoroughfares were lit even brighter, most notably Michigan Avenue, and tall skyscrapers were reaching out to the midnight sky with fingertips softly pulsating amber.
Taking the 'L' to the Magnificent Mile, I carried my luggage to the Double Tree Hotel and familiarised myself with my new surrounding environment. From my suite on the twenty-third floor, I looked out to the coldness outside; directly across were office buildings and down below a few late-night stragglers hurrying on by.
I had a full days' work of attending seminars, conferences, and hands-on events the next day and found myself shuffling between the Wyndham Hotel, the Intercontinental, and the Sheraton. Why the organisers of this annual Chicago Dental Conference couldn't book all of its activities under one roof (like at a convention centre) remains to be a mystery to me. Nobel Biocare had chosen this conference to officially introduce its new Procera OptiMet scanner for the first time and, typical to large industry players, rolled out a lavish ballroom extravaganza to mark the occasion. Food and wine flowed continuously with live jazz performances to keep us entertained.
I managed to squeeze in some time to see Chicago at leisure outside of the ballrooms and conference halls over this multi-day event and played around with my 40D a little more. It was certainly frigid outside with temperatures in the negative, but I quite enjoyed breathing in the crisp cold air as I stood at the edge of Lake Michigan frozen over. A delightful view of the downtown core stood proudly and prominently across with that unmistakable black beauty known as the John Hancock Tower in the mix. The great photographs I took of this city had not so much to do with my compositional skills, but because the city itself was so photogenic. It just lend itself to me for the time being.
Further along, I had discovered Navy Pier Park, and further along, a giant statue of Grant Wood's American Gothic just outside of the Chicago Tribune building. In the evening, I had inadvertently stumbled upon a fireworks display about to begin on the Chicago River as part of the Toast: The Magnificent Mile event. I was in awe and I couldn't stop taking photographs while playing with my long exposure settings to capture the changing light.
The very next day, I had ventured into an Apple Store, then walked over to Pizzeria Due for Chicago's infamous deep pan pizza. Snow continued to fall while I continued my trek to Millennium Park to see the Silver Bean. Over at the Archicenter/CitySpace Gallery, I learned a lot about Chicago's long history and it's many engineering feats including the reversal of the river's flow from Lake Michigan and it's L line. Over at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, I was intrigued and inspired by Bettina Hoffmann's La Ronde video installation which aimed to capture that void space between the photographer and his/her subject. She had used video and panned around and around and around in a loop of a still 360º photograph. In one sequence, I had noticed a carton of orange juice on the table with Jus d'orange printed on the other side as it panned around 180º. This lead me to believe that this was taken in Canada, and sure enough, after reading the plaque on the wall, I learned that she is from Toronto.
The snowstorm brewing outside turned even windier and I had to start walking backwards to avoid getting snow pelting on my face. A nearby smoker struggled to light his cigarette. After standing in front of the Sears Tower, I went over to the John Hancock Observatory and went up with a discount ticket due to poor visibility. I had stayed there long enough for the storm to blow over and was rewarded with a spectacular view on the 94th floor. Shoot me for being a tourist, but I grabbed one of the handheld device called the Multimedia SkyTour and learned a lot about the building and its surroundings with David Schwimmer narrating.
