November 2024

And some clever quip...

Volunteering at the Camosun Bog

In BC, kids need to work or volunteer for 30 hours in order to graduate High School. That has lead to a lot of kids talking about their volunteer hours and a small industry in finding opportunities for kids to volunteer. Nara volunteers at a community center and she volunteers for kids soccer. Claira was interested in doing something for the environment so we volunteer on Saturday mornings at the Camosun bog.

The bog is being "restored" which basically means they are taking species that don't belong in a bog (like Salal (Gaultheria shallon) or hemlock sapplings) so that species they do want (sphagnum mosses) can grow. They also remove rotting wood and try to keep some balance between bog plants (labrador tea vs bog labrador). Basically every week we garden in a public park.

We volunteer for between an hour and an hour and half. That is long enough for Claira it means I'm not to sore after pulling Salal for an hour and half.

We hope to have many more visits to the Bog.

Happy Birthday Helen!

Helen's birthday is in November. Birthday parties generally mean dinner at a Chinese restaurant with family. This year we picked West Lake and my parents came to Vancouver to join us. Helen wanted a special cake this year - a cake in the shape of a roast pig.

East Side Culture Crawl

The East Side Culture Crawl is one of my favorite events of the year. It runs 4 days - Thursday and Friday night and Saturday and Sunday during the day. On Saturday I was going to Jeremy's wedding and on Sunday we were flying to Hong Kong for another wedding. My only time to visit this year was a Thursday night. Claira and I went down to Chinatown to visit a few places studios. Our first studio is the basement of the Sun Wah Building. One of my favorite artists in the building is Leanne Christie who kindly explained her process and tools to Claira.

Our second building was the Gore Studio (Kim Heng Noodles). There were a number of textile artists showing which Claira quite enjoyed.

Friday night I went out again and had a good time visiting some of the smaller studios. As I don't like taking photos of the art, not all studios result in photos.

Jeremy and Ronn Wedding

Jeremy and I have been friends since high school and we currently work at the same games company. At one point there was five us working at Electronic Arts together. Jeremy and Ronn had a destination wedding planned for Mexico that was canceled because of COVID so this wedding has been richly anticipated. Ronn and Jeremy have been thrifting for months to find the containers for the table center pieces and Jeremy spent weeks cutting names with a small home laser cutter.