stories from seattle

2005-10-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

this goes out to all you haters who have been spreading rumors that i have not been dating a covergirl and faked the entire thing (**cough** caissie **cough**)

http://www.aallnet.org/dayinlife/finals/winners.asp

the photo should be on the cover in nov/dec.

in other news stuff is going well out here, i'm working on a very exciting project at work and just got back from a great vacation in st martin with stina (barely getting back into the country). look for photos to appear on flickr soon.

2005-07-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

in other recent photo news stina and I were invited out to a demo derby with maggi and jeff for july 4th. it was mad fun consiting of: demolition racing, figure-eight racing, school bus figure-eight racing, roll-over competition, jumping a school bus over a boat and some bikes, boat racing (they chain a boat to the back of the car and race in a figure eight), and 3 car chain figure eight racing. oh and a classic demolition derby. things to take away from this event: outside of the city things pretty much immediately turn to support our troops, figure 8 racing is safer than you would think, for only $200 you can buy and race a car in a demo derby.

there's photos available here

the last 7 months

2005-07-11T21:24:00.000-07:00

AALL
Originally uploaded by bredman.

in case you've been wondering why my posting since january has really died off, here's a picture of my girlfriend stina who's been keeping me busy.

that's right i'm dating a covergirl

2005-05-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

anyone want to go to chicago to see the intonation festival?

2005-05-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

so what's happened over the last week?

not alot except that I did manage to capture a photo that goyer has requested be banned from the web. i'm not one to respect publication bans so until goyer gets his lawyer(s) on me you can check ming, matt, and I dressed up in horrible 80's costumes for dan's party. a couple of lessons from the 80s party: zima + pop rocks produces an explosion to rival any baking soda + vinegar volcano, jeans can be so tight they explode. i think the saddest part of the night came when i went out to chapel after the party and people didn't even realize i was in costume. apparantely stock in my fashion sense is quite low these days.

i've also started growing wheat outside of my window in my apartment. you may be wondering how I could grow wheat outside of my window, the answer is (obviously) by blocking off the fire escape with a giant plastic tub filled with soil and seeds. i figure this transgression is fairly minor given that people escaping from fire via our fire escape were already doomed before i started growing wheat out there. there's two primary methods of death/injury when trying to escape via the fire escape. first there's the collection of empty propane cylinders that sit outside of another of our windows waiting to trip up escapees worse than anything donkey kong ever did to mario. than if you manage to make it by the strategically placed pile of cylinders there's still the matter of the absence of a ladder for the final one story drop onto un-even concrete/rocks.

morality of gardening on your fire escape aside i'll keep you guys updated on the progress of the wheat. because i know you're interested.

2005-04-22T00:17:00.000-07:00

I came across this link while looking at a friend's blog who is still at waterloo. it's soooo funny but still so waterloo, i've only watched the google boy video so far but it roxorz.

2005-04-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

bleh, the q and not u concert got cancelled tonight for reasons unknown.

instead i've sat at home drinking and watching futurama. which don't get me wrong is pretty good, but is no concert.

finally got around to buying plane tickets to vegas last weekend. should be down there from June 2-5, friends who enjoy buffets, booze, gambling and strippers should tag along.

2005-04-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

Not much going on lately, only thing of note is my increasing excitement for the Q & not U show next Tuesday. I really love living close to all these venues.

Matt recently got a boat which is probably the nicest boat I've been on. It's missing a few necessities: a heater, nice speakers, and me on a tube behind it. But I'm planning on remedying the tube part in the near future. I've been looking at this model
primarily due to the comments about 7 feet of air and reccomendations to wear a helmet while tubing. There's some pretty weird ass tubes out there: here, flying tube, cop tube, sumo tube, tube i would never get in. However if I had enough money I'd definetly get one of these and hook it up to the back of the boat.

2005-04-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

so what have I been doing to the last 3 months?

hanging out with my new girlfriend
working
running in a 3.5 mile race
flipping over the handle-bars on jon's bicycle and screwing up my head/shoulders/wrist
having a birthday party involving a keg and lots of cake
buying a playing with my first mac (a mac mini)
flying back to toronto for Jeremy's wedding (photos here)

here's some actual interesting content from Stina detailing how to wrangle your way out of a drunken bet in Washington:

According to the case Ex parte Burns, 194 Wash 293, 77 P. 2d 1025 (1938), "one who is completely intoxicated at the time of the execution of contract lacks the requisite mental capacity to make a contract." Since Washington State views a bet as a contract, the agreement by which I entered into is void due to my inability to understand the ramifications of said agreement. In Restatement (Second) of Contracts §16 (1981), contracts made by an intoxicated person are voidable when "the other party has reason to know that the intoxicated party is unable to act in a reasonable manner in relation to the transaction or lacks understanding of it." While it has been established that I vaguely remember that agreement, I argue that in the past I would have not offered such a large sum of money on something I was unsure of if I had all my functions. That money would normally go toward my future pop-tart and coffee fund. In addition, my inability to be wrong signals that I was not of sound mind upon entering this contract.

2005-01-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

Interesting links I discovered while playing with stuff I'm working on:

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002JELX6 (the review is a real winner)
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596090065

And a link to a CBC story I read today, if you're going to sue an American TV show for making you sick at least make it Fox News.

2004-12-21T13:51:00.000-08:00

in seattle you mow your lawn during the winter

2004-12-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

still alive out here on the west coast but being busy has resulted in not alot going up here.

what's new you ask? did alot of christmas shopping. saw the dears, the weakerthans, and the arcade fire (it was alot of the). bought a new computer for myself. bought a stereo. slept through getting paged for work early in the morning.

i went to see the arcade fire on the recommendation of matt, kevin, and lauren who raved about their show in guelph. their show here was good, but not good enough to get seattle dancing. admittedly this is a near impossible task given that a) seattle doesn't dance and b) that the show was a xmas fundraiser for KEXP and a sizeable portion of the audience was women in heels. that said they put on an amazing show and were forced off the stage at 11 due to archaic all ages laws in Seattle. the only two shows i've been to here that have resulted in mass dancing have been les savy fav and !!!. if you haven't checked out les savy fav's inches yet you really should...

2004-11-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

Had a great last couple of days. Played some scrabble with friends on Friday then went out to a bar/club with some friends. It was gay night and I was promised free drinks from men if I went along. The free drinks didn't materialize, what did materialize is random freaky animal costumed dancers, my flirting with woman who was probably too old for me, and a flier for a party the next night.

Saturday was spent laying around my apartment, which seems depressingly typical for my Saturdays, and then that evening I went out with some friends of Natalies who were visiting. The party that I got invited to the night before was an after-hours house party in a loft in Seattle. It was a pretty cool party and you definetly felt cool wandering up to this dark anonymous building at 1:45 to be greeted inside but a full bar and DJs downstairs. Today was basically a wipe as I ended up staying at this party until 4ish and then sleeping until 12:30.

New Year's at my place in Georgetown is a go and I just now sent out an invite. I know some email addresses were missing and some were probably wrong. If you feel like you were wrongly excluded from this prestigious invitation you're probably wrong and I intentionally left you off the invite list because I secretly hate you, but email me anyways and I'll double check to see if you were on the secret hate/no invite list.

2004-11-26T17:46:00.000-08:00

had a fun thanksgiving with friends last night. anyways i'm really just posting this to put up this quote from a guest at the dinner last night:

"if you don't eat until you throw-up you're a terrorist"

2004-11-21T17:00:00.000-08:00

read a great article about canada in the ny times today. check it out here. use bugmenot for username/password if you don't have one.

my favourite line: "united only in their contempt for centrally situated Ontario — rich by Canadian standards, and revoltingly smug about it".

2004-11-20T16:42:00.000-08:00

so i caved early and started internet dating again. i know i promised to blog about it but it's harder to do than i thought it would be. if i get all bitter about the entire situation i'm sure a new blog will emerge. for now this tidbit of an email to my ben.redman email account from someone who contacted me will have to do.

Hey there...first things first...what is the deal with the "redman"
reference? Are you a fan of his? Do you listen to "rap" or "hiphop"?
Sorry, I've never been a big fan of the kind of music that you can't sing
along to in the shower.

my favorite part is definetly the quotes around rap and hiphop. it's like i'm getting an email from my grandma. of course it's nice to know that while she dislikes rap she manages to keep up to date on rap enough to know about redman. or maybe she just got that information from his brief and ill-advised attempts to sell speed-stick on tv.

feel free to leave suggested responses in the comments, i know ming had a great one.

2004-11-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

life's been busy.

work was stressing me a bit this past week but it's passed. other work related news is that i got my business cards. it's so cool having them and i actually got to use them at some recruiting event that i went to. that's another nice thing about work lately is that i've been getting invited to go out to these dinners where we try and sell college candidates who have job offers at amazon on the idea of working at amazon and in our group. it's not too much work and you get to eat/drink for free at nice restaurants.

non-work related stuff is that i went to the weirdest wedding reception ever last sunday. it was at a local bar and featured a cross dressing mc and and live all girl punk band performance. also my stuff finally arrived from ontario so i've now ditched my used futon on the floor for a real mattress on a bed frame. the other stuff is basically staying in boxes for now. the only item i was really looking forward to receiving was some furniture and my bed. now lots of stuff is here cluttering the place up. lesson learned: give away more of your shit.

oh and a notice to all readers: new year's at my place in georgetown is the place to be this year.

2004-11-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

one thing that i've taken up since relocating to america is a love for all things canadian, which really seemed absent from my life when i'm up there. i check the cbc website religiously, i listen to more canadian music now, and i now discuss more canadian politics than i ever did (americans want to know about the country they all talk about moving to). the latest addition to my canada habit is recording cbc radio3 and listening to it at work. it's a great radio show that i never listened to when i could actually get the cbc but now that i'm down here somehow seems more alluring.

2004-11-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

in other news degrassi the next generation is looking quite promising. it's on all the time and i've never seen any of the episodes before so it's all new.

i really think the oc could take some cues from degrassi next generation. first more drama in the shows. more gay characters hiding their true sexual orientation. more cheating couples. more lame pronouncements of love. more people who are dying of cancer. second the oc needs more action per show. in one episode of degrassi that i watched yesterday a boy pronounced his love for his girlfriend with a song, another character flirted with a friends older brother, gf told bf he was going to get laid, gf accused him of telling everyone that he was getting laid and called it off, bf makes out with another girl who is also dating someone from the show. oh and there was a secret admirer sub-plot going on the whole episode. all of this happened in a half-hour making the oc seem like about as energetic and exciting as comic book guy. finally the oc needs to expand their cast of characters. luke/anna/oliver were all good but they need to be around for longer periods of time. in degrassi characters drop in and out of episodes all the time. they have a huge cast of characters that are featured in some actors but just in crowd/classroom scenes in other episodes. characters that you know in the background really helps you feel like degrassi is really happening somewhere. the oc does beat degrassi in the critical hot girls/music/jokes categories.

2004-11-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

been a busy last couple of days. monday i went to les savy fav who put on a killer show at neumo's. lots of multi-level dancing and lots of classic capitol hill kids. good times were had.

last night was the death cab/pretty girls make graves show. it was a classic example with what happens when you couple a killer rock band with a band who's best know for quiet emo ballads. there was a huge crowd but throughout the opening pretty girls set most people just stood around. pretty girls play great dancing music, but there was just no movement. then death cab took the stage and there was sedate nodding for the majority of their set. they still played a great and long set and even had eddie vedder come out during the encore to play a song with them, which was amazing. the oc effect was also in show there were more kids than at a skatepark in suburbia.

in the last couple days i've heard far too many move to canada/marry a canadian/secede and join canada jokes. i think i should have a leaf tattoo put on my forehead and see if i can get free coffee/beer for being canadian.

2004-11-07T19:13:00.000-08:00

well the oc premiere has come and gone. it was good but i sorta felt deflated after watching it. i had this whole vision of what was going to happen during the premiere: seth returns to newport, ryan fights it but moves back in to the cohen's, and then a first day of school filled with ryan/marissa and seth/summer drama. none of that really materialized. in fact the show ended just at the point where all that was about to happen. i felt like i did after watching terminator 3 and waiting the entire movie expecting to see giant post-apocalyptic battles filled with robots then having the credits roll just as i think i about to get what i want.

the weekend was fun. on friday i went out to a recruitment dinner then to my boss' birthday party. eric proved me wrong at his birthday and was successfully able to finish 4(plus?) drinks by the time i left. i had figured it would be about two and then the floor. saturday i layed around and played a bunch of crimson skies. saturday night was alot of fun. we went out with some of the kids that amazon was recruiting. hung out at the cha for a while and then came back to my place and watched 2 hours of degrassi next generation. which by the way rox.

big month coming up for music in seattle. i actually had scheduling conflicts due to all the shows going on in this town. feel free to look at matt's wiki for a selection of shows i'm thinking of seeing.

2004-11-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

for those of you who also feel like moping about the election results see here. one of my favorite pictures from there.

on my way home from work today i saw some hoodlums marching along broadway carrying anti-bush signs and making lots of noise. they were dressed like they were ready to riot but their actions betrayed otherwise. you can only argue so much with democracy.

one more day to the oc premiere.

2004-11-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

i'm now down in seattle and watching the election results roll in with increasing despair. part of me just refuses to believe that i live in a country where the majority of the population supports the policies of bush and has a positive view of the last four years of his reign.

republicans mystify me. i can believe that republican voters exist out there somewhere in america, sort of like giant squids exist somewhere in the pacific, but i'm always shocked when i actually encounter them in person. whenever i actually meet a republican ii'm always so taken aback that i simply sit and stare with my jaw hanging limply. as a result i never get to talk to them, never get to relate to them, and the mystique of the republican only grows stronger for me. there's so many people in this country which i cannot relate to.

halloween was fun. i stole a costume idea matt and i joked about last year and draped a patterned bedsheet over my and wrote "ghost" on the front in permanent marker. it was fun.

work is alright and it seems like i'm working on some interesting stuff again, but it's still work.

2004-10-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

Now back in Georgetown and fearing heading out to Seattle. When I was in England I was somewhat indifferent to heading out back to work. About halfway across the Atlantic I contemplated prying open the door on the 777 and making a jump for it towards Ireland.

I now devote most of my time to shopping for laptops or stereo equipment. In between that I look at concert listings for Seattle, it seems like EVERYONE is playing there in the next month or two. In the infinitesimally small gap left between those two items I've been visiting friends and procrastinating about packing.

2004-10-18T03:55:00.000-07:00

i was explaining to alex in oxford about open container laws in canada and how drinking in public can result in $100 fines for unlucky parties.

he explained that recently in oxford they had started banning drinking in public from certain areas of the city. unfortunately he and a friend were wondering through one of said areas and enjoying a pint, no doubt freshly purchased from the off license, when a cop happened upon them. the exchange that followed could have only happened in britain. instead of fining them or taking their beer the cop explained that they weren't allowed to drink in this area and that they were going to have to down their pints immediately. his friend promptly pounded back his pint as the policeman looked on, at this point i like to imagine them standing below a sign which indicates this is a no drinking in public area. alex though can't pound beer as quickly as his friend and had to take a couple gulps at it. the cop got a bit irritated at his slowness and to remedy the situation start to egg him on to drink quicker as any good policeman would.

pretty much the polar opposite of what happens when you encounter a cop with a beer in your hand in canada.

2004-10-18T03:50:00.000-07:00

> halloween is soon and i'm excited to party :) they dont celebrate halloween in canada do they???

i know this may sound crazy to you but we celebrate hallowe'en too in canada, but it's a bit different. instead of dressing up as monsters/clowns/etc everyone dresses up as either a beaver or a lumberjack. of course when the kids go house to house "trick or treating" they collect wood instead of candy, occasionally full logs if they get lucky. occasionaly gang style beaver vs. lumberjack fights will break out where the parties involved fight for each others wood stockpiles. usually the lumberjacks win these fights, given that they have axes, but occasionally a beaver manages to bite someone's leg off and then the lumberjacks generally get freaked out and give up. it's been getting a bit crazy in the last couple years and the governments trying to control it more these days but it's such an ingrained part of canadian culture it's difficult.

2004-10-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

safely back in london.

had a good last couple days in istabul where people i knew kept randomly checking into my 4 bedroom dorm in the hostel.

flew into london, which was uneventful, and stayed a couple nights with some people i met on a cruise in turkey. they were a couple of kiwi girls who work in london now. we went out with a bunch of their friends to medicine bar which was sooooo much fun. i had to explain to one of them, who may visit, that it's simply impossible to find a bar that good in seattle. it's a very depressing thought.

then on saturday i headed up to oxford where i crashed at mark and eloise's and we went out to college bop, which is just a student party. the bop was distinctly oxford, populated with people in bowties and built 6 foot 5 guys with crewcuts (as alex observed "spot the americans here on a rowing scholarship"). this morning had my first taste of black pudding, which is a sausage made from pig's blood and fat. it wasn't as disgusting as it sounds.

the weather here is complete shit and i'm very afraid i'm looking at what the next 6 months are going to be like in seattle.

2004-10-11T07:46:00.000-07:00

couple of oddities of turkish culture i wanted to jot down before i forgot them:

it's perfectly acceptable for turkish men to walk down the street linking arms. this is seen as a sign of good friends. also acceptable behaviour: walking with had around a man's hips, had on a man's thigh/knee while sitting, hand over shoulder while sitting.

the east of turkey is incredibly friendly: i had drivers stop 3 times while i was walking along the road to see if i wanted a ride, i had people buy me dinner, everyone was happy to sit and chat broken english with me. it was sort of like what i imagine being a tourist in japan is like, you're this novelty that everyone wants to enjoy.

hitching a ride from people who speak a language you don't understand is very weird, for all you know their conversation could be going something like this: "you want to club him since i got the last one?", "actually i just got this new rope i was thinking of trying out", "come on, you know the club works why won't you just use it?", and so on

2004-10-11T07:21:00.000-07:00

apparantely lonely planet has a very different concept of what is an intimidating bar than i do, or i suspect most men do. when i was in van i was getting extremely bored and the only bars listed in the lonely planet were described as "men-only drinking establishments that even some men may find intimidating". i tracked down one of them and it was in a basement and the windows above it had been all boarded up on the floor above it. very little signage indicating there was a bar. i had to walk past a few times before i got up the courage to go in.

as i walk in i notice ifirst of all that the place isn't even really a bar, just a place with tables where you sit and they bring your beer to you. also:

it's painted pink

there's flowers hangning on the wall

it's very bright

there's 3 fans blowing all the smoke outside

they are showing turkish soaps on the television

they serve food

within 5 minutes in the place a couple of turkish guys invited me to sit with them, tried to speak english with me, then paid for two of my beers. it was fun but not what i had psyched myself up for.

about 3 nights later i was in trabzon and went out to a bar which was smoky, loud, and i'm pretty sure i was mistaken for a prostitute. now that was intimidating.

2004-10-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

over the last couple of days i've seen a castle, a couple palaces, and a monastry. to be honest they all start to blend together after a while.

now i'm back in instanbul where i'm going to see some sights and do some shopping before i head back to the uk.

in other news the head of ncorp is also named ben redman and has mysteriously decided that my gmail account belongs to him. he first sent 4 messages from his work account, aptly named test1-test4 to my account. then i began receiving messages from his friends. then from a mailing list he's signed up for. as far as i know he hasn't been able to login to my account, he hasn't sent anything, so i'm unsure what use he's getting out this scheme. i can't even imagine why he would tell his friends about his new email address before he even logged into it. so random....

2004-10-08T05:17:00.000-07:00

i remember when we all got a laugh out of our old subletter tac ho's (spelling may be completely wrong) name. i certainly got a laugh when i arrived in oxford last summer and found out ming was british slang for ugly (my flatmate described it as "a very unfortunate name"). as it turns out being named ben really sucks in turkey.

ben is turkish for me. i always get people coming up to me and using their limited knowledge of english to try to speak to me. usually this consists of "hi", "how are you?", "what's your name?". after those questions the conversation usually stops as this is what it sounds like from a turks perspective:

turk: hi
ben: hi
turk: how are you?
ben: good
turk: what's your name?
ben: me
turk: what's your name?
ben: ME

sometimes the what's your name question gets repeated over and over again, because i assume they think i'm replying "me?" as if the question could be directed at someone else. usually after two or three attempts the person either gives up or gets it.

2004-10-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

high-beam/horn usage varies wildly in turkey from north america.

here are some of the uses of a horn:
-hello
-goodbye
-i want to pass you
-i'm a bus, do you want me to stop?
-a pedestrian or car just got with 5m of this vehicle

high-beam flashing occurs for all of the above with the addition of the 50m flash which occurs whenever one car moves within a 50m radius of another. the drivers never forget to do this flash either.

2004-10-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

as per jessica's request i enquired about panya. apparantely that's not a turkish word, penya is and means sweater (i th?nk) hopefully that helps.

2004-10-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

last night i got on my bus to Van and had the man next to me try speaking to me in german. i got it across that i didn't understand what he was saying. he then kept talking to me. i basically guessed answers to his questions via the following algorithm:

1. nod
2. if the same question is repeated say one of: age, name, place of birth, or destination until question changes

anyways after i thought this had come to an end and i had communicated everything i possibly could the guy points to my lonely planet book which i have open and says "canadish?", not sure how he knew how to use the -ish suffix if he didn't speak english.

this morning i arrived in Van and gave the town it's first blond hair/blue eyed person in a long time judging by the looks i'm getting. this afternoon i ended up hanging out with a bunch of turkish guys which was interesting/weird. turkish men basically cuddle with their male friends. they stroke each others hair, hold hands or link arms while walking down the street, and sit with their arm over their friends shoulder or on his knee. it takes some getting used to.

there's no one who speaks english in this town so i'm a bit bored. luckily i'm also tired from the bus trip.

2004-10-03T01:00:00.000-07:00

i'm now in goreme and spent most of last afternoon/night battling food poisoning. it was my first experience with food poisoning and i had nightmares of having to check into a turkish hospital the following morning and have access only to one of those toilet paper free hole-in-the-ground toilets. luckily i woke up and was able to drink water again. the verdicts still out on whether i'm able to eat food or not. never having had food poisoning before i'm really amazed at how quickly this passed. anyways as result of the battle i'm tired and light headed and don't feel like doing much so i'm whittling away the day reading and surfing.

up to this point things have been going great. spent 4 days cruising the mediterranean with v-go who we're great. the crew, who were a family, were loads of fun and the boat was a good size.

here's some notes from the cruise:

every morning the crew caught some fish then in the evening cooked it up for dinner. this fish was great and so was all the other food.

i think a good portion of the reason the cruise was so great is there were lots of great people on it. i'd recommed bringing at least one other fun person to hang out with you. alternatively you could just get lucky like me.

cell phone coverage in this country is amazing. pete, from our cruise, managed to get a call informing him that his daughter had totalled the family car back in america while we were mid-cruise. put this into contrast with the fact that i sometimes lose reception in downtown seattle.

after the boat cruise a bunch of us spent one last night together in olympos, a weird backpackers tree-house compound in turkey. it was again very relaxing but i decided i really needed to see some of turkey not just veg out in a tree-house resort that could be anywhere. so the next evening i caught an night bus up to goreme. bit dispointed that i couldn't convince people to come with me, they were afraid of even going near the iranian border, but did what i had to do.

yesterday morning i went on a tour of goreme immediately after arriving. for lunch ate some dodgy chicken kebab lunch which gave me food poisoning. later that afternoon two korean girls on the tour asked to have their picture taken with me, take that people who thought i couldn't pull off long hair, but given my intestinal state at the time i was in no position to do anything except concentrate on not shitting my pants.

on an unrelated note the login last signed into msn on this computer was turkishladylover@hotmail.com. this doesn't surprise me at all, turkish men make ******'s man-whoring look like the work of 5 year old boy.

edit: identity removed

2004-10-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

still alive but a bit pressed for time.

2004-09-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

well i got held up in marmaris, as it always seems to happen, by going out and getting drunk in marmaris until the wee hours. we cruised around various bars in the area and paid obscene amounts of money for drinks at bars. we also saw what appeared to be 14 year old english girls dancing on the bar as there appears to be no drinking age in turkey. then end of the night marked the second time during my trip which some breaking in has been required to get back into my hostel.

the next day was a complete washout. i tried to go to a haman (turkish bath) but got lost and wandered around town. then ended up speaking french to a turkish guy in a park who i think tried to sell me hash, but there may have just been some language difficulties.

the next day i rented a scooter at scooted around the peninsula that marmaris is on. it was fun and there were great views but i was paranoid about getting lost and wiping out and being left as a heap on the side of road that no one would notice. luckily neither of above happened. it turns out the area i was scooting through is actually a major honey area. all you could see lining the roads was bee hives everywhere. oddly enough there were no flowers. as you drove along you would feel ~5 bees a minute bounce off of you, presumably to their deaths. only one of them managed to position itself to deliver a death blow as it bounced off my forehead. i was curious if people have bee allergies there or if they just all die at age 2 if they do.

i then left for fethiye where there were actually other people in my hostel, though i still have the dorm room to myself. we hung out at the beach yesterday. i learned a new slovenian drink called bambus. it's basically the cheapest red wine you can get mixed 50/50 with coke. the slovenians had also just come from the eastern part of turkey and had some amazing photos which has prompted me to change away from a beach vacation. they also said that basically they had been staying 50% of the time with turkish families or turkish guys who were happy to have two girls stay at their place.

more random observations about turkey:

twice now while eating dinner i've had street kids approach me to try and get me to pay to have myself weighed while i'm eating dinner. i can't imagine this is a very lucrative business for these children to be in. in fact i'm pretty sure these are the children who have sniffed too much glue to perform other more profitable street kid business such as: pick pocketing, busking, delivering tea

all turkish towns have army bases, with guards with machine guns, in the downtown area. at the beach i was at yesterday there was an army base with prime beach front property. it's pretty freaky, like they're expecting a massive revolt to break out at any moment.

the markets here are filled with knockoff designer label clothing: dolce & gabanna, diesel, ck, fcuk, etc. mysteriously grouped in with all this designer fare is no fear knockoffs. i can't figure where no fear is still considered a designer brand

there are two things that invariably wake you up early in the morning in turkey: roosters or mosques

i've seen so many fcuk shirts over here i want to vomit. when i get back home i'm buying one and rearranging the letters to just say fuck. that anagram is soo tired and everyone knows it but is afraid to say it

tomorrow i leave for a 4 day cruise to olympos so i'll be out of touch for a while.

2004-09-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

now that i've got a working english keyboard here's a bit more about my time in gümü?lük.

on the second day there i decided to undertake some physical activity and try to swim to nearby rabbit island (which now houses a rabbit colony courtesy of some local entrepreneur). big mistake. i made it out there alright but when i arrived i noticed all these black spiking things all over these giant slippery algae covered rocks. as i stumbled out of the water across these rocks i managed to fall and when i put my foot down to right myself i put it right on top of a sea urchin. anyways my heel emerged from the sea looking like some rogue accupuncturist had gone to work on me while i slept. i sat down and pulled ~20 needles out of my heel. luckily there are non-poisonous and all that resulted from the spill was a sore heel with ~20 purple spots on it.

2004-09-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

i ended up spending an extra day in gümü?luk because it was so nice. beautiful sunsets and a room right on the ocean made my time there great. everyday i would get up and tell myself i was going to do something then just sit around on the beach until 3pm and then wander into town for a meatball sandwich (köfte). at night i had some great seafood dinners and sat around on my balcony. for the first night and a bit of the night afterwards i had some neighbours my age to hang out with but then they headed back to london. yesterday i finished my book and got tired of hanging out primarily by myself and decided to head into marmaris to catch a coastal cruise. gümüm?luk was seriously beautiful and had a really nice feel to it, it would make a great week long relaxing vacation, but i had more of turkey to see so i headed out.

i arrived in marmaris and the city is basically the same as bödrum; big, noisy, and touristy. i'm already plotting my departure until it's cruise time, since cruises only leave twice a week. to top it all off the hostel i'm at is empty again, as i said in one my postcards turkey really feels like a tourist ghost town. gümü?lük yeah, marmaris nay.

2004-09-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

here's a couple of great travel stories one from me and one from a canadian guy i met in selçuk.

first the james story. i know telling other people's stories is a bit lame but this one was so good i didn't want it to d?e. james was in the south and saw some cutlery he wanted in a store. they didn't have it in stock but told him a merchant in izmir did. he was heading that way anyways. they put him in touch with the merchant who also offered to put him up for a night while he was in town. james thought "great someone to show me the turkish nightlife". he arrived in izmir and that night they went out to a couple clubs but buddy (the merchant) spent all his time talking in turkish to his friends and left james alone. later on they leave and he apologizes and tells james he'll take him to a bigger club in town for the rest of the night. they drive through some seedier parts of town. then the car slows down and pulls over. james has already been mugged once in turkey so he's a bit nervous here. then a trans-sexual prostitute comes over to the car and james' buddy tells him to just wait in the bar across the street and disappears into the brothel he-she in tow. james goes over to the bar and gets a beer. it turns out the bar's sole purpose is to watch who is going in and out of the the transexual brothel across the street. he sits and drinks his beer and along with everyone else in the bar watches the steady stream of cars pulling up to the house across the street. 20 minutes later his buddy walks into the bar all sweaty and they just go back to his place to sleep.

turkish keyboards tire me so my story's going to be abridged. i was out late in selçuk and came back to my pension(hostel/hotel) which was locked. i managed to climb in through and open window over the owners body and past his dog all with no one being the wiser. to top it all off i was even drunk as this all went down.

2004-09-19T02:53:00.000-07:00

i'm now in a shameless tourist trap of a town called Bodrum. it's got an alright beach but is loud and expensive so i'm out of here for somewhere quiter today.

it's been pretty quiet so far, i had the whole floor to myself in my last hostel, so i've been mainly hanging out with the locals. trying to speak to them in a combination of slow english and gestures gets annoying though and sometimes they will start to rant about how easy the west has it, which is legitimate i just don't want to sit through it. that said why you travel is to introduce yourself to new ideas and experiences and i guess this is doing that.

one strange thing about turkish men is that when you're talking to them they always ask you about your girlfriend within the first 10 minutes of conversation. they always appear shocked when i don't have one and then proceed to tell you about their girlfriend(s) and if you're lucky regal with tales about their sex lives. this has happened with 5 of the 5 turkish guys i've met so far. i'm not really sure if this is a turkish thing or if this is just something they ask foreigners but it is always weird.

in selçuk i was forced to reverse my position on affirmative action and ended up by a present at a jewelery shop which was the only femaled owned one in selçuk just for that reason. this was after a turkish man who i was talking to translated prostitute in turkish to "salesgirl" in english.

i ran into some fellow canadians last night who were staying at the same place as me in bodrum and they mentioned that the rest of turkey they had seen has been really quiet. a canadian i ran into selçuk told me that i was the first english speaking tourist he'd met in the week he'd been here. good for prices, bad for running into people to travel with.

2004-09-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

i just figured out how to change the keyboard to english and quadrupled my productivity but realized i had very little else to say except this little tidbit that got left off the last post:

at the ruins i visited today, a church built to honour st john there was a typo in the english translation, using hose instead of house, which seemed to vaguely imply that is was here that st john had his way with mary.

2004-09-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

i'm now in selçuk, or selcuk if that character doesn't show up right.

istanbul was fun but it's good to get away from the craziness of a big city, and stuff is much cheaper out here. saw some ruins today which i viewed as a playground for adults and climbed all over the old roman columns and walls. it was fun.

on the bus into town i met my first real turkish person. a bartender who was my age, he was enthralled by my iPod but listened to it at crazy loud levels. unfortunately the only american artist he knew was fifty, luckily i still had that one jay-z song on there for him, i think i heard him listening to M83 as i was dozing off. it was really nice to have someone be able to speak turkish for me as the bus station was devoid of tourists, i think i was the only one with light coloured hair out of 1000.

syria is getting the boot as a possible secondary destination and lebanon has taken it's position after a frenchman informed me that the second language in Lebanon is french.

oh and for the first time since 99 i've been reduced to using dial-up internet.

2004-09-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

am currently in istanbul after a hectic flight booking to get out of London.

my flight from london had a stop over in frankfurt. normally uneventful except for a beautiful hippy girl that was walking in front of me. turned out she was going to a gate near me and i watched with dismay as she walked over to stand next to her boyfriend. her boyfriend who was wearing some sort of indian jeweled pullover short sleeve shirt, a dress, and a pair of sandals and who was currently in the process of ashing his hand rolled cigarette on the concrete floor of the waiting area for their flight. sure enough beside him sat the the bongo drum that he and his gf were bringing as a carry on. to top it off as i was taking all this in he whipped off his shirt and changed into one that beared a cartoon image of some indian god, kicked off his sandals, and started to do what i assume was yoga, all in the m?ddle of the crowded boarding area.

i'm planning on heading south soon as it is not that warm here and i'd like to enjoy the heat while it's still around in the south. rumour has it that visas are readily obtained at the syrian border so i'm comtemplating continuing my chase of the warm weather down there if i can find a good book on syria.

2004-09-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

other england observations:

mysterious importance of your 21st birthday

late night kebabs are everywhere and soo good

hammer attacks, ie. physical assault with a hammer, seem to be a growing problem in this country. i guess when the bouncer frisks you and finds a hammer he just thinks you're going to do some building.

i really enjoy being in bars that have a wide range of people in them, which alot of the local pubs seem to

2004-09-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

i forgot to mention that anyone out there who would like a postcard should send me an address and i'll try to hook you up.

2004-09-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

ming and i are now back in london after leaving here in the middle of rush hour on monday to drive down to cornwall.

here's some quick tidbits about the week:

only nearly killed us driving on the wrong side of the road once, but it was really close so maybe it should count double

hiked for ~5 hours and got lost in the middle of a town we didn't know in cornwall

saw land's end which was spectacular if you hiked off to the south a bit

watched ambrose's band action and action play in london

saw what can only be described as the most eclectic lineup ever at ambroses show: a male singer who really belonged in a gay burlesque show (performed topless most of the time and was pretty much constantly air humping something), a heavy glam rock band made up of two decript 40 year olds, ambrose's fairly heavy emo band, a funk band that was pretty decent, and a crappy self-indulgent "rock" band to close off the night.

saw cows being herded over a bridge across the M5

the english know how to drive. I cruised back from cornwall going easily 135 the entire time. sooo much better than america.

shopped for clothes for a school clothes party that Ambrose is taking Ming and I to tomorrow

england is still as expensive as ever, $12 CDN for a breakfast anyone?

still haven't gotten around to buying my ticket to turkey

2004-09-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

arrived safely in oxford and have managed to meet up with mark after an interesting series of events.

i called mark after arriving in oxford via a bus from heathrow and he and eloise were going to come down and meet me by the bus station. needless to say there was a mix up in directions and we were waiting for each other in two different locations. he called me on his cell phone but ended up calling my home in canada and explained to my mom that he couldn't find me and was wondering if she knew where i was. he described her as sounding a bit worried.

shortly after he and eloise found me and we went out for a few drinks and then headed over to gareth's for a bbq. that night i got to pass out in my own bed courtesy of mark and eloise and this morning got treated to a wonderful breakfast.

gmail doesn't seem to let me view my messages in this internet cafe so i can only read the alarming titles. mom i'm alright, ming my new # here is 07981 520912.

2004-09-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

i've got six gmail invites and no one who wants them. leave your email in the comments if you're interested or just email me.

2004-09-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

great things about being home:

driving along the 401 at 130 km/h and not passing anyone

the sky being bigger than the land for a change

running into friends all over the place

my house now has furniture other than a coffee table and two couches

2004-08-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Back in Canada now and sitting around home.

Only thing notable about the last couple days was that on the flight out here they didn't ask us to turn off cellphones or electronics at all. Not sure if this is a change of policy, or if they just forgot, but I celebrated by listening to my iPod as our flight touched down in Toronto.

2004-08-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

it's been overcast and cloudy for the last week in seattle. on wednesday i had a one on one with my manager and he was doing all the talking while i was just staring blankly out the window at the clouds hanging above. halfway through the meeting he broke of his conversation and turned and whispered to me "it's always like this here".

the weather is seattle's dark secret. it's great during the summer but there's almost a mythology surrounding how unbearable the winters are.

tomorrow back to canada, then in a week england.

2004-08-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Our company picnic was yesterday. it would have been fun if i was 5-10 years old but instead it was merely alright. lots of free food and booze which i was unfortunately too hungover to enjoy. i did play in the company broomball tournament, this is an amazon specific form of broomball, and did reasonably well but cost my team with stupid penalties. we won our first game against the media team. notable events from this game were my two goals and a vp of something something breaking his collar bone. in our second game we were defeating by cormie's team. the big injury in this game was when one of our players got hit in the mouth and the other team's player got hit in the face. i'm not really sure how it happened but there was a lot of blood. needless to say broomball is a rough sport but luckily i emerged unscathed.

i think my university email account is now gone so if you need to get in touch with me use ben.redman at gmail. I have this horrible fear of putting my email address online after what my hotmail account turned into so you'll have to patch of that email address yourself. people who really should get in touch with me are people who are going to be around toronto/georgetown/waterloo between august 28 and september 3rd when i will be briefly back in the country.

2004-08-20T00:40:00.000-07:00

it seems whenever i'm feeling down a gay guy cat calls me. mysteriously this seems to cheer me up. gay men of seattle even though i'm not sleeping with you please know that your attempts don't go unappreciated.

2004-08-19T21:23:00.000-07:00

my mentor sent me this story today at work. we both agreed that the trap they laid for the bear would have also caught us.

2004-08-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

today at work for the first time i used something i learned at a previously job. i think this is the first time in my life where those previous employment items on my resume have actually meant anything in the real world

2004-08-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

further debate about the correct pronunciation of pho

2004-08-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

remember when matt was taking pictures around our house and I mooned him? wasn't that a laugh? ahhh good times...

well this friday during a party at my place that photo of my ugly ugly ass rose from the ashes of obscurity to our 46" tv in front of the eyes of 15 party goers courtesy of the media centre random photo shuffle. it was a glorious occassion: no one suffered any permanent eye damage and i got some gold stars to put on my name tag (presumably for being the first one to expose my ass at the party)

tonight i sit at home drinking and reading the new adbusters magazine, which I think I love mainly for the design rather than the content. the magazine deals entirely with how we are destroying the planet and the future. it is quite frankly some of the most depressing journalism/editorial i've read in a while. it's weird how even with all these facts in my face it's the problems with my own life that keep me up at night never the impending apocalypse...

2004-08-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

as you may know i've been playing around with internet dating over the summer. it hasn't gone well and after getting stood up yesterday i drafted a long bitter post detailing all of my experiences. luckily for me, unluckily for you, i held off on posting it. you'll now have to settle for this highlight reel instead.

interesting things that have happened to me so far: being told that the correct pronunciation of pho is fa (completely unsubstantiated at this point), watching my date snort a line, finding out where ben gibbard hangs out in seattle, getting ditched via text message, meeting someone who was a fulltime bicycle courier, some people are under the impression there are 3 kinds of computers: ms apple and sony, discovering how much free shit magazine writers get, the realization that i'm a really well adjusted person.

2004-08-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

so you all have your own links now..

2004-08-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

San Francisco was fun but cold, it was around 16C all weekend. I had to buy a sweater as the first order of business on Saturday morning. It's sorta nice to be back to warm sunny Seattle, though not nice to be back at work.

In San Fran we saw the Golden Gate bridge, much more impressive in person, walked along the trolley route, make sure you stop at the Norweigan Seaman's Club for the best view on Nob Hill, saw the Pacific, dark cold oceans are more impressive than warm azure ones, and saw Berkeley, it's no Oxford. Aside from the sites we went to a number of bars. The one thing that San Francisco does right when it comes to bars is girls dancing on them. Both nights we were out we saw multiple girls dancing on the bar, which depressingly never seems to happen around here...

2004-07-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

Finally listened to CKMS today for the first time almost 4 months after leaving Waterloo. Anyways I'm hearing lots of great music and free web radio rocks, listen now!

2004-07-29T22:36:00.000-07:00

In interesting candy news I learnt today at work they ratio of the colors of M&Ms is different in the peanut variety than in the normal variety. There's double the number, relatively anyways, of blue M&Ms in the peanut bags vs the plain bags. The weird part is I can imagine some crazy experiment where they discovered that people who like peanut M&Ms have a stronger preference for blue candy.

Anyways they have pretty cool FAQs for all their products here.

2004-07-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted in a while because I've been sick and lazy. This sunday I woke up and felt hungover, but it was weird because I hadn't been drinking the night before. I thought nothing of it until I woke up on Monday and felt even more hungover and my legs were very tired. I decided to stay home and hope it sorted itself out. Woke up Tuesday still sore legs still hungover. Then on Wednesday I woke up and felt a bit better but all the pain from my legs had migrated to my right arm. Today was the day it moved to my head and I was just dumb all day.

The last couple nights I've had another recurring dream. This one's a bit weirder. In it I'm the head of an international salt cartel. I'm also the salt dealers and the cops trying to bust the salt dealers. Salt, the other white powder.

2004-07-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

If you're in Southern Ontario and going to go to one music festival this should be it. I'd drive from pretty much anywhere in Ontario to see the show on the opening Thursday. Friday and Sunday look pretty good too but I can't say I know much about the Saturday night lineup.

2004-07-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

I just bought my plane ticket to London: Arrive in London September 3, depart Oct 22. In between there I'll be spending the majority of my time in Turkey I'll also be visiting friends around England.

2004-07-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Differences of America vs. Canada:

They'll accept my blood. Canadian Blood Services refuses to because I've lived in England for too long. Come on, we have mad cow too now.

There are dogs everywhere. So far I have seen dogs: on the city bus, at work, in a grocery store, and at a bar.

2004-07-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

After a healthy dinner of raspberries, beer, nachos, and a pizza pocket I started surfing the internet while watching the sunset. I was lead eventually to Vice magazine.

I feel like I've been left out of the loop on this one. Funny magazine about pop culture out of Montreal that I've never heard of until now?

Anyways I'm particularly fond of their hilariously evil DOS and DON'TS section, my fav so far is the burn they lay on the guy in the flash shirt here. From this section it seems clear that the magazine is written by heartless robots designed only to produce inflammatory humour. Perhaps best described as an evil pseudo-hipster version of Maxim.

2004-07-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Living in Waterloo I used to think that I was a clean person deep down and that given the chance I would live in a nice clean environment. Last Sunday a large piece of glass got broken in our apartment. The shards quickly got swept into a pile. Over the last week this pile of broken glass has continued to sit on our floor mocking my assumptions of cleanliness.

2004-07-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

i've been obsessively reading about turkey lately. i figured this was because i'm so excited about my trip, but then i realized i'm still for some reason too nervous to by my plane ticket to london and set it all in stone. i'm not sure why this is but it's weird...

on a completely unrelated note last week i had my first recurring dream. oddly enough it was about the end of the world and prominently featured cats. i'm not sure if the cats were the cause of the apocalypse but there sure was alot of them. i guess it could have been a coincidence that they were present en masse but somehow they seemed involved in it.

looking back i think the cats were just there because there's this annoying cat that's always meowing in my window in the middle of the night, but dreaming about the apocalypse is still pretty weird i think

2004-07-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

Did you know a pack of starburst gives you half your daily recommeded intake of vitamin C?

2004-07-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

well again I disappeared from the internet for a while...

again there's not really any good reason for this disappearance.

here's a quick wrap up of the last couple weeks as I remember them:

got a visit from a southern uncle who helped me decide to travel to turkey in sept/oct. watching matt and john risk their lives jumping from wet rock to wet rock amongst the rapids. playing silly games in bars. going to a bbq with people from work and thinking that this is a life i would enjoy. watching stars and stripes explode in the sky and accidentally cursing out america. interbuilding firecracker warfare. reading alice in wonderland and wondering how any child is supposed to understand this book. long days at work. delaying filling out my visa application. natalie comes and goes. get chastised for my dancing while drunk. get my new digital camera. discover the sign i really wanted to take a photo of is gone. a friend finishes work and moves to ms forever. more silly games at bars. more confusion.

2004-06-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

the big news of today, well for me anyways, is the cancellation of lollapalooza. it's a bad omen for alternative music when a big name tour gets canned even in a year when it has it best line up of the millenium.

while this cancellation bodes poorly for indie rock in general i'm hoping it will end up working out well for me. i was far too lazy to drive two hours to spend two days in an over-crowded ampitheatre to see lollapalooza but now hopefully some of the multitude of artists on the tour that i wanted to see will simply come to seattle to play shows at local venues.

convocation: seeing friends and family was fun, being hungover/jetlagged (primarily hungover) for 48 hrs not so fun.

2004-06-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Ms. Poon,

I regret to inform you that after working a summer internship at a
respected company in my field they have extended me an offer of fulltime
employment. The work experience is exceptional and I feel the time is
right for me to persue employment here. As such I have decided to
begin work here this fall instead of attending the Master's program at UBC
as I had previously indicated.

I offer my sincerest apologies and can only hope that this has not caused
you too much trouble.

Ben Redman
Student #: 15921042

2004-06-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

in other news last week was spent interviewing for a fulltime position at amazon. yesterday i found out i had one if i wanted it. now i really have to chose between ubc and seattle.

2004-06-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

was out jogging yesterday morning and went by an elementary school where kids had drawn hopscotch squares, benz logos, and $ signs all over the sidewalk with chalk. at first i was all shocked at how today's children had lost their innocence in the face of these huge corporations. then i remember all the nike swooshes i drew as a kid and the song about mcdonalds and kfc.

i guess the lesson is that i'm now at the age where i can deceive myself about my childhood should i choose to.

2004-06-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

had a good weekend around seattle. last week was hectic but next week should clarify what i'll be doing next fall, and possibly for a while after that.

on saturday night i heard an interesting story. on the power lines behind my apartment there's a couple pairs of shoes tossed up and around the power lines running between the poles. i think there was actually three pairs when i moved in but one has since fallen down. anyways i always assumed this was just a fun way to get rid of an old pair of shoes. i brought this up over dinner on saturday and it turns out in seattle, possibly america?, people toss shoes over power lines when they lose their virginity. i'm going to have to keep my eyes on the power lines now but for now i'm pretty certain the area behind my apartment is the teenage sex hotspot in seattle.

[Updated]

Cormie sent me the following:

The losing your virginity explanation is just one of MANY theories. See:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/factoids/a/sneakers.htm

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_274.html

http://www.snopes.com/crime/gangs/sneakers.htm

JC

2004-06-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

i don't really have much to say but people bitch when i don't update so here it goes anyways. don't send me emails complaining about how long and boring this post is.

this weekend was pretty fun, jenn was down and we used that as our excuse for this weekends massive bout of bar hopping.

saturday was spent shopping, i bought a couple of small items. the most memorable of which is a bright green furry kid-sized stool that is now my bed side table and greets me every morning. the stool is considerably more cheery than me in the morning. that night we ditched the highest maintenanced member of our posse and headed out to a couple of local bars after watching calgary lose the game. the bars were great and cheap and definetly require a re-visit later on.

sunday i slept in, went to see a movie, then whittled away the afternoon reading in a local coffee shop. there's so many coffee shops around here but i went out to a nearby one last weekend with a friend and it was so good that i now have no desire to try any others. it's delicious, quiet, comfortable, and they even roast their own coffee beans on site!

work is busy, but i'm enjoying it. my stuff goes live on the site starting tomorrow if all goes well. when you search for red wagons and red wagons appear, that's me. if it doesn't work it's probably tibor screwing things up again.

2004-06-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

sitting here in our kitchen and watching the sunset over the mountains and downtown seattle is absolutely spectacular.

if there's one thing i'm going to require if i move out here it's an apartment with a view

2004-06-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

Weather was beautiful again today, normally the other slacker from work and I would spend an hour laying around the park behind our office. However today she let me down and I spent the entirety of the day cooped up in her office.

At least I don't have a window to remind me of what I'm missing outside. Windows showing me places I can't go have a way of depressing me.

2004-06-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to Ryan Adam's newest album, Love is Hell, compulsively for about the last 5 days. My latest obsession from it is English Girls Approximately. I urge you to check it out if you haven't already.

2004-06-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I posted that I think I've forgotten what happened since my last post so you'll just have to sit through a long rambling post that has no seeming point.

Two weekends ago I went to see Cursive play a local plea show that was raising money to support John Kerry, or rather to defeat Bush. Widespread opinion around here seems to be that Kerry is a douche bag but if you don't vote for him you're even more fucked (here). Sort of how the Conservatives got power in Ontario if I recall correctly (I was wrong and could be completely off on this). The show itself was alright until the encore when they brought a guy with a trombone. He really started kickin it on stage and a good time was had.

The next week was basically spent laying around the house, working at the office, and raging on the media centre.

This friday we had a small party at our place on Capitol Hill and this time some of the Amazon interns I invited actually showed up. It was a reasonably good time but then we ended up going down to Pioneer Square which was as unimpressive as the first time we went. I did get to do some drinking with the American interns which was fun, they all drink crazy shots (we had some weird Jaeger and Red Bull shot). One of them even got a drink with a cherry in it and was drinking it in the club, and get this: none of the other interns made fun of him. Apparently cherried drinks are socially acceptable for males in America.

Saturday I went biking and we did something at night, refer to Matt's blog for more info, it pretty much sums it up.

Sunday I saw a movie then got dragged on an obscenely long shopping death march. I hadn't bought anything when we were nearing the end and fearing going home with nothing to show except sore feet I impulsively bought a pair of jeans. Hopefully they'll be returning to their home in the next couple days.

Monday was a holiday here and Ming was here. Ming's really into doing stuff so I ended up being unwillingly dragged off my ass and down to REI and then up to the grocery store. Oh and off to an apartment he was looking at somewhere in there too.

Today I went to work. Got bored and searched for ben redman on Amazon, top result, I don't know how they expect me to improve on search performance like that.

2004-05-21T00:54:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the Cardigans show, a couple of oddities:

The opener was too young to drink in the US and had to be escorted out of the bar immediately after his set.

There were two girls talking in sign language in front of me throughout the opening act. Normally talking during an act would be rude, but talking in sign language during an act is just weird.

2004-05-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

I promised myself I wouldn't turn into a corporate whore and already within three weeks I'm blogging about my company.

2004-05-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've finally got around to putting up links to some friend's blogs. I know they're not all there but you should be able to reach every friend of mine's blog that I know of by link hopping from those 3 on the side.

Feel free to bitch in the comments if you feel left out.

2004-05-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Two cool things I found out about Amazon today:

We're having an in-house battle of the bands competition where the winning band gets to play at the company picnic

Any band can add their CD to the Amazon website through the Advantage program, though we take a ridiculous 55% commission on sales if you do this

2004-05-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

woohoo! looks like i'm going to be down here for August after all.

2004-05-16T15:47:00.001-07:00

Well posting has been slow lately primarily because I've been busy, which is definetly a good thing.

The last week at work was good and somewhat productive with the exception of friday, during which i suffered through a nasty bout of meeting induced narcolepsy. During the week Matt and I headed down and saw a show at the Crocodile, Sarah Harmer and Hayden. Sarah Harmer was amazing and quite foxy, though I think that's just cause I have a thing for musicians. I wasn't too enthused by Hayden, but that could have been because we missed half his set and had shit standing spots while we were watching him play.

I had lunch this week with a bunch of the other co-ops this week. A bunch of new kids arrived from Michigan this week and I imagine more and more American interns will arrive as the summer progresses. They are a fairly diverse bunch ranging from a 20 year old to a grad student.

Thursday I made it out to Ikea to furnish my room. Spent alot of money, but still significantly less than I would have spent renting furniture for four months. I was previously under the impression that Ikea furniture came with all the tools you needed to assemble it. This is not the case, luckily we had a screwdriver that was able to do double duty as a hammer.

Friday afternoon I felt great since I got out of work earlier than I thought I would due some network issues at work. I previously compared server crashes to a snow day but I think a more apt analogy is the grade school fire alarm routine. Friday night Matt and I had a party at our place and then headed downtown, none of the Amazon kids showed up but some friends of Matt's from work made an appearance. The trip downtown to Pioneer Square was unimpressive and in retrospect I should have gone to see Minus the Bear instead.

Saturday was better. I went out for breakfast, picked up some tickets for the film festival, bought a new shirt, and managed to succesfully use our Media Centre to watch XXX. In XXX you get to watch Vin Diesel expertly play the role of worst actor ever. After watching the movie I thought he must be a musician or wrestler or something, but no acting is his day job. That night John and I went out Six Arms, a local pub, which to my delight had a Constantines song on while we were there. Then we went out to the Baltic Room, a local club, I managed to catch the eye of many boys in the bar but alas no girls.

I now have a phone so feel free to call me, I always enjoy thinking about home. 206 612 9672

2004-05-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

new template and new comments. sorry to those of you whose comments disappeared in the switch.

2004-05-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

server crashes at work are like snow days at school, i'm outta here!

2004-05-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

My week went reasonably well all things considered. I've got myself moved into my room, though I still have no furniture except a bed and some plants. Matt assures me we'll be going to ikea later this week where I intend to pick up a bottom of the line red dresser as a tribute to the red dresser that I had to leave behind in Ontario.

The visa situation looks quite bleak. Matthias, my visa sponsor, sent me an email yesterday informing me that they definetly wouldn't be able to extend my visa past August 3rd. I think I might still have one trick up my sleeve though which I'll run by Matthias sometime next week.

Work's been going great, I really like both my boss and my mentor and feel like I've accomplished something already in the first week. The other co-ops I'm working with don't seem quite as fun as the Oxford crew, but that would be quite a feat. Tomorrow night I got invited to a dinner party at my mentor's house. I was supposed to bring some wine and being new to the whole wine thing I had to spend a solid 15 minutes scanning the wine counter for something that said goes with fish on the back of the bottle.

Last night Jon, Matt, and I went out for dinner at Bleu, alright food great atmosphere. Matt then took us out to a local bar which would have been cool if I was 28 and rich. We called it a night early since Matt had to sail early this morning.

Today I ran every conceivable errand I could to avoid having free time in which to go running. To that end I succeeded. Now at 9:30 I sit at home alone hoping that Matt will wander home soon and we can still do something tongiht. I fear Matt may have grossly overstated the amount of partying that goes on in Seattle.

Next week Minus the Bear and Sarah Harmer/Hayden are both in town. Just have to try and find some people to head out to the shows with me.

2004-05-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

preliminary results seem to indicate that i'll only be able to work for three months. i'm soooo pissed off at HR right now.

2004-05-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

My second day from work has left me less tired so I thought I'd tell you all a bit about my job. I'm working in the personalization department of Amazon and in particular I'm working with how their search function works. So hopefully one day you'll search for an album and it'll me hopelessly trying to point you away from that 50 cent album.

Today I found out there may be trouble with my visa at Amazon. It seems HR there screwed up and I may only be working until the start of August instead of until the end. Hopefully they'll be able to sort this out. I think Amazon's willing to spend the money to do it but with visa there's always legal as well as monetary complications. I'm a bit disappointed but things could be worse.

On the plus side of things, yesterday I bought my cell phone off of eBay, thanks Matt, and got a new futon and pillows for free, thanks Katrina(sp?). Today I opened an American bank account and cashed my travel reimbursement check. The check takes two weeks to clear so I'll continue to be broke and living off of Mastercard for another couple weeks. This weekend, or Thursday, I'll hopefully get to check out Death Cab for Cutie when they play in town, though I haven't had a chance to check ticket availability so I may be screwed.

Matt's apartment is pimping but the black leather couches, hardwood floors, and designer bar stools make it look like Patrick Bateman's half finished apartment.

2004-05-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

Observations from Seattle:

Cars stop for you while you wait at a street corner to cross. The first time this happened I just stood there wondering why the hell the car was stopped in the middle of the street.

Our neighbourhood has both $400000 lofts and loads of homeless people, drug dealers and mercedes dealerships, prostitution and starbucks aplenty.

2004-05-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Cancun and am now in Seattle. Things are busy but good. I've already managed to get a hold a free mattress courtesy of a friend of Matt's and am now just waiting for the sheets and stuff to arrive from home.

I'll try and update more later but for now I must sleep.

2004-04-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

For people reading here who are not aware of the whole Matt situation, for instance my parents, comments that are attributed to Matt that sound sexual/hateful/mean/weird are not actually from Matt but from some anonymous hater. Comments that sound overly fememin however may in fact be from Matt.

No mom, Matt will not be giving me handjobs in Cancun.

2004-04-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Defintion of spam from my marketing text:

Unsolicited e-mail may anger some users so much they spam the sender by sending a return message designed to jam the sender's system.

2004-04-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

As I procrastinate for my final final exam this evening I thought I'd update anyone who still reads this and isn't in contact with me regularly about what's going on in my life. The last couple months have been fairly exciting.

I'm leaving for a vacation in Cancun this Saturday with a group of my friends. After I get back from that, on May 2nd, I'm immediately flying out to Seattle where I will start work at Amazon.com for the summer. Then in September I'll most likely be heading out/up to UBC, University of British Columbia, to pursue a Master's degree in Computer Science. Once I get out to Seattle I hope to get blogging again, but only time will tell.

About a minute ago I accepted the offer from UBC. I wrote the email stating that accepted the offer then meant to click 'Save' and sit on it for a while, instead I hit 'Send'. So now I'm in.

2004-03-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

this completely intuitive error message goes out john cormie, the greatest c++ lover/apologist:

Binder.cc: In member function `void Binder::processRegister(RegisterMsg*, int)':
Binder.cc:107: conversion from `std::map<unsigned int*, std::queue<Location,
std::deque<Location, std::allocator<Location> > >, argComparator,
std::allocator<std::pair<unsigned int* const, std::queue<Location,
std::deque<Location, std::allocator<Location> > > > > >' to non-scalar type
`std::map<int*, std::queue<Location*, std::deque<Location*,
std::allocator<Location*> > >, argComparator, std::allocator<std::pair<int*
const, std::queue<Location*, std::deque<Location*, std::allocator<Location*>
> > > > >' requested
Binder.cc:107: cannot initialize `std::map<int*, std::queue<Location*,
std::deque<Location*, std::allocator<Location*> > >, argComparator,
std::allocator<std::pair<int* const, std::queue<Location*,
std::deque<Location*, std::allocator<Location*> > > > > >&' from `
std::map<unsigned int*, std::queue<Location, std::deque<Location,
std::allocator<Location> > >, argComparator,
std::allocator<std::pair<unsigned int* const, std::queue<Location,
std::deque<Location, std::allocator<Location> > > > > >'

2004-02-20T18:32:00.000-08:00

I started reading this article to read about drunk monkeys and I ended up coming across much more interesting stuff:

One would expect that native American alcoholics are pushed by their genes, but how much of their drinking is attributable to cultural degradation (defeat is particularly hard on the males of the defeated culture; world-wide, there are three times as many male alcoholics in subjugated or formerly subjugated societies)

One of the scientists involved in the study describing some research he planned to do:
Ervin dreamed of stocking the southern tip with monkeys and doing a massive Calhoun experiment : fencing them off in a confined area and providing them with unlimited food until, as with Calhoun's rats, every space was filled and they became a city and began to rape and murder each other and the mothers to commit infanticide, eating their babies. Ervin could play Animal Farm games-- control them with electronics and gadgets, make the weakest one the only one who could open the food, and watch how he became the leader, make the alpha male a criminal outlaw omega.
Surprisingly he manages to somewhat justify this:
To which Ervin, in one of our discussions on the island, had already countered : "Even if my motives were purely selfish-- intellectual curiosity, ambition, to be the one who discovers the genetic basis of alcoholism-- this research would still benefit the human race. Alcoholism is the third leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.. One in eight children has an alcoholic parent. The annual cost of the disease is a hundred and thirty billion dollars-- twice the cost of the Gulf War-- mainly due to absenteeism, but also because it causes chronic heart and liver disease and several kinds of brain rot and takes up half the nation's hospital beds, the health costs are staggering.

"If you take any maximum-security prison, the diagnosis is uniformly alcoholism," he continued. "The majority of murders, rapes, and property crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol. The question is, is drinking simply a common practice of the criminal subculture, does it contribute to the crime, or is it just contributory to their getting caught?"

For another take on drinking, not really alcoholism though, here's an interesting read. And with that I'm off to the bar.