Double yoga

Very good yoga practice today.

I tried a different combination today, with yin class first and then flow. The idea behind it was that I'd do the streching first, and then limber up with flow - and it worked quite well. Yin class was fairly small, and Jason made us hold the positions for very long times - in most cases over five minutes - for some reason my soft tissues have been really stiff lately so this was quite painful.

The flow class was filled up to the last spot, but I felt great after the yin class and was able to concentrate on my practice more than usual. Jason pointed out that in "fashionable" ashtanga cities like Los Angeles and New York it's quite common that in classes the mats are lined up with next to no space between them. I find it weird to think that people would want to practice in that kind of environment, I need at least the room to make airy Surya Namaskars. It must be an entirely different experience.

I also met baby Jack again today, and he was much happier today than last time. He even smiled when I came up - extremely cute! I'm finally coming to the age (or mindset, I guess) where I go all weak in the knees when I see babies.

Shots outside

Weird incident happened this morning. I was on my computer, cheking my mails when I heard couple of bangs outside. I registered them, but didn't think anything of it, as there is normally some construction going on - except these bangs were followed my a man screaming, then shouting "I was shot! I was shot!". At this point I go to the window - no one is screaming anymore, but I see two police officers on Burnaby, one talking to his shoulder mike and running one direction, other one running the other direction. Both went out of the view, and then a big silver car speeds up with screeching tires and disappears. About 30 seconds later an ambulance comes in, but all the action is behind the houses so I couldn't see anything more.

Local news sites don't report anything about this incident, so I don't know what really happened. Well, I know someone was shot, but most likely not dead. Really weird, this is not the neighbourhood you'd expect something like that to happen. So believe it or not, that lovely photo taken couple of days ago was actually a scene of crime.

Yet another weekend over

It has been a busy weekend. We spent yesterday morning on the beach, when weatherman's prediction turned wrong and it was sunny and hot. It's quite interesting, observing people and see what kind of groups they form. When we came in before noon there were basically two groups of people: single men and women in twos. Some couples and families - but girls were almost always there with their girlfriens, and men were alone. After noon the groups of young men started to come by - but still the different sexes came separately. Difficult to say - some people (or should I say single men) complain that Vancouver women are too difficult to please - but I think it's more of a general western world phenomenon. Hundred years ago women couldn't lead indipendent lives so they had to marry to get "ahead" in life - now when women can choose, they often choose to be single rather than be in an unsatisfying relationship. (For some reason this seems to irriate some men, like women had some kind of obligation to pair up and deliver the goods. Personally I find that kind of attitude depressing. Go figure.)

In the evening we went to see some quality wrestling - I was going to write about it here, but it turned out to be rather long so I made a separate entry of it that you can read if you're interested.

Today has been a very peaceful day - chatting to Chu in the morning, napping during the day and a yoga attempt in the evening (teacher didn't turn up), topped up with some delicious pork chops by Dragon. Although we didn't get a yoga class we got a long nice walk and sunset on the beach, and some really good conversation about future plans.

RAW in Vancouver

In the evening we went to see some wrestling (it's been, what, about two months since the previous event? too long) as WWE RAW was finally coming back to Vancouver. I had read some reports previous reports from past house shows in Vancouver that were slightly depressing - half-hearted and half-empty crowds, but this one turned out to be nothing of the sorts. The event was held at PNE Agrodome, a quaint little arena with little over 3000 seats, and it was almost full. Wrestling fans in Vancouver seem to be a bit more casual than the fans we're used to in England, and we felt almost freekish in our fan t-shirts (me in a Wrestlemania and Dragon in a Benoit t-shirt) - which in England or other events we've seen would be standard equipment.

Show was excellent fun, and for the record brief description follows:

• At first Tyson Tomko vs. Vicera - with Candice Michelle as guest announcer - seemed like a strange curtain raiser, but crowd was really into Vicera. He made the match funny, and used quite a large set of moves unlike he does on TV, and for a man that weighs 500 pounds he sure moves fast. Vicera won and after Tomko had left he asked and Candice to come and dance for him, which she did - and they left together hand in hand. Cute!
• Next up was Chris Masters vs. Tajiri, and Masters got some respect out of me for the first time. Firstly, he's much more handsome in flesh, and secondly he could actually wrestle (and being with Tajiri obviously helped quite a bit), something of I haven't been quite sure of before. Tajiri got huge ECW chants from the loving audience and got loads of really painful looking kicks in, although Masters did win with the Masterlock.
• Next up was the first title on the line with Tag Team championship: The Heart Throbs vs. Maven & Simon Dean vs. Hurricane & Rosey (c). The match wasn't the greatest, but ring psychology was first rate so it made all the difference and a very entertaining match. Some great comedy spots, and quite surprisingly the biggest chants were for Simon Dean ("Simon sucks!") - champions retained, of course.
• The announcer was just about to announce the Diva match next, when The Coach came to interrupt him. He did a bit of a heel speach and then announced the match: Victoria vs. Christy Hemme and once the ladies were in the ring he said that since he had "created" both of the divas, he was the only one qualified to referee this match and told the real referee to leave. Dispite Christy's short wrestling career she did well, and crowd was quite excited about the match - much more so than any other crowd I've been in before. Victoria did a bit of a heel turn in the middle of the match, but Christy ended up winning after a low blow to the Coach, and a new referee came to do the lightning fast three-count.
• The following match was Chris Benoit vs. Gene Snitsky with ECW rules ("no rules"), and was a bit of a disappointment. Benoit works so much better in a proper match - but it was cool to see my first hard-core match live though. Mostly because live you can see much more clearly how the wrestlers don't actually try to kill each other but use the weapons much more carefully than what it looks like on TV. Benoit was a crowd favourite - although a little less than I expected. Benoit won after a flying head butt.
• The match of the night was undeniably the Intercontinental Championship match: Christian vs. Shelton Benjamin (c). I was expecting Christian to get a big pop, but the love the crowd showed was pretty extraordinary. What was more extraordinary though was the reception Shelton Benjamin got - the crowd actually boo'ed him the minute he appeared - the babyface champ. The men came to the ring, started the match a bit, but after some serious "Let's go Christian" chants Christian stopped the match and took the mike. He then proceeded to do his best to get the heat he needed by insulting the crowd ("I'm from Toronto Ontario, not Vancouver BC!") and out city ("I don't even like Vancouver - in fact I hate Vancouver!") but to no avail - people had decided to love him, so love him we did. So they continued the match for a bit, but Christian still got huge loving from the crowd, so now Benjamin takes the mike - at this point they had given up their roles and decided to switch them like the people wanted, so it was his turn to insult us. He said that we didn't know good from bad, and that we didn't deserve him and that he would take his belt and stop the match. Which he did and started to walk away - for a moment audience was in shock, I mean was he really going to leave after only few minutes? - but got quickly on the bandwagon and started a huge "You suck!" chant. Christian sent Tomko to get Benjamin back, and the match continued, this time with the switched roles. I had forgotten how good it was to see Benjamin as a heel - and he seemed to really get into it too, and a top quality match followed with Shelton Benjamin's win (of course). Even in the end the crowd refused to show him love and waved him of with a "na-na-naa-na".
• After that match it was really hard to top it, even if it was Edge vs. Kane. I was surprised at Edge's reception: I was expecting proper heat, but there was some lame heat, some lame cheering. Edge took the mike and said that Lita wasn't here because she was waiting in their hotel room - and at first he was going to stick it to her husband, and then he was going to stick it in her. Que Kane's music - and another surprisingly lame reception: people cheered, but not that much. Match that followed was short and not that exciting, people were not that into it after that brilliant match before. There were some "You screwed Matt" chants, but nothing compared to some of the recent crowd reaction on TV. Edge won after hitting Kane with his briefcase - another disappointment, like Kane was going to drop with something like that.
• After the intermission (and the t-shirt gun guy) the announcer announced Muhammad Hassan w/ Daivari. This was another strange reception - half of the crowd was actually cheering for him. First I wasn't sure if it was the fact that he always dissed Americans that made him cool in Canadian eyes - but I think it was more to do with lot of Arabs in the audience (there were even pro-Hassan signs). In any case he made his status very clear by giving the ultimate insult to Canadians: claiming that they just wanted to be Americans. After enough insults Daivari took the mike, with another suprising reaction: after first words (in Farsi) there was a big section in the crowd that started cheering loudly - I can only assume they understood what he said. Daivari didn't get very far though, since Chris Jericho's music hit to a fantastic pop. Jericho got to the ring and said that he knew that Hassan and Daivari were just a bunch of ass clowns who liked to cheat, so he was going to bring his friend to the ringside to back himself up. So he announced Rowdy Roddy Piper who got the biggest pop of the evening. Piper announced that together with Y2J they were going to represent Canadians, and they were going to kick Hassan's and Daivari's asses. Hassan got some respect out of me in this match - again, lots more moves than on TV. Some comedy spots, of course with Piper and Daivari, and Jericho won with a Walls of Jericho. During the whole match there were huge Y2J chants going around the arena.
• Main event was a handicap match Batista vs. Triple H & Ric Flair. Huge pops of all wrestlers, especially Batista, who also got the biggest number of signs. Trips and Flair were mostly playing fair with only one man in the ring at any time, and lets just say that this match was as good as Batista gets. I mean, with workers like Triple H and Ric Flair who have similar styles to his and can carry him pretty well, it doesn't get better than this. Not saying that the match was great, as it wasn't, but it was a solid enternaining match that lasted probably about 15 minutes. Good finisher with Batista keeping the belt - I don't know if it was a work or not, but he looked absolutely rotten afterwards, dead tired and panting. Like a real champ though he did his poses on the ring posts.

Biggest pops:

1. Roddy Piper
2. Christian
3. Chris Jericho
4. Batista
5. Triple H

Biggest heat:

1. Shelton Benjamin
2. Tyson Tomko
3. The Coach
4. Simon Dean
5. Gene Snitsky

All in all, a very good evening - does even rank quite high in the list of house shows I've seen, especially due to the fantastic athmosphere in the Christian vs. Shelton Benjamin match. The announcer said that they would be returning to Vancouver "in the near future" - I hope that's true because that would save us some money and inconvenience. I took some photos in the event too, but due to the poor lighting most of them didn't come out. I might put up the ones that did later.

Ah bliss

Happy happy (pills)

It's no use letting one bad day overshadow all the good ones. So when I met my doctor today, I said I wanted off Paxil, and she agreed that if I was doing well - and she said I looked good - it was better to come off the meds. So she wrote me a prescription for new pills - I got down from over half of my previous dosage, and I'll start taking the little yellow pills next week (after my little red ones run out in five days time). I'll phase out of them completely within the next month or so. (And for what it's worth, at today's meditation my solar plexus chakra (related to anxiety) was very open. Which is supposed to be a good sign, if you believe in it. Even if you don't it's for certain that different chakras feel different on different days.)

But seriously, I feel pretty good - and the weather is really helping. It's so sunny and hot, and West End is full of happy tanned (and some burned) people eating ice cream. I resisted the temptation today... Another thing that has occurred to me lately that it might not have been an accident that I started putting on more weight at the same time I started on my medication - many antidepressants, including Paxil, are known to cause some weight gain. We'll see if coming off them will make the weight control a bit easier.

Karma on the beach

Maybe it's karma for you, but after yesterday's entry a Canadian lady emailed me and promised to have a look at my resume. I have to say, there's lot of good karma in this country - I'm constantly humbled by the generosity and friendliness of these people. So I sent her my resume and she emailed back to me with a long list of improvements - basically nothing wrong, but lot of little details that will hopefully make it easier to grasp. My warmest thoughts go to Outi who suggested this, and Joan who took the time to look trought the resume.

Also our new dishwasher arrived today and our handyman Frank installed it promptly. It's new and shiny (well, white actually - but shiny white!) and most importantly it's very quiet. Which is very important because the kitchen doesn't have any doors, so with the old noisy dishwasher watching TV was pretty much out of the question - the new one should make life easier. After checking that the first wash went ok, I headed to the beach.

It's actually better that the coast is cooler than the inland - especially in a weather like this you really need the breeze. Lots of young people on the beach - students! I know the type! and besides, all respectable people were at work. It was my first day of sun worshipping, so I had decided ahead of time that I wouldn't stay longer than an hour - I had sunblock 30 on, but still. I kept dozing off, only to be awoken by the next song starting on my iPod, and after an hour and a half I finally managed to get up and go and buy some ice cream from the beach cafe. Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough, I might add - very nice and sweet, and totally forbidden. I don't think I burned though, but if I did it would so be my fault.

It was even too hot for yoga - I went, but pretty much no one else bothered to come. So we sat there chatting, and I got to meet Jack, Jason and Kelly's six week old baby. He was very cute, although very tired and cranky, probably due to the weather.

It's still hot, and I've been trying to drink as much as possible all day long. I made some cherry rose rooibos ice tea - about 1,5 liters, which I drank, and I've probably drank as much water too. I love this weather.

Beach weather

First of all, thanks for everyone's kind words in the previous entry. It's important to know that I'm not alone in this - both in a way that someone cares, but also in a way that other people are or have been going trough the same thing. I think Outi's suggestion of getting a Canadian to have a look at my resume would be a good thing - one of Dragon's friends promised to do that some time ago but nothing ever came from that (either). Maybe I could ask someone at the yoga studio.

In other news, Vancouver is experiencing a wonderful heat wave. Today was very nice, I walked downtown to do some shopping - I got Dragon the Revenge of the Sith Visual Dictionary he asked for. I went to Chapters, the bookshop on Robson, and it's weird - this must be the only place in the world right now where Star Wars books and other merchandise is hidden in the lower corner of the childrens section. They didn't have the other book I was looking for - Richard Morgan's latest Woken Furies, so I had to go to the other Chapters store on Broadway and Granville. Not that I'm complaining, today was the perfect weather for being out and about.

Tomorrow and Friday should be even hotter, they are predicting temperatures closer to 30 C. Then it's too hot to do anything, so I'm heading for the beach. I still haven't got a new bikini, but the old one will do for now - what I do have thought is a new must gadget for the beach... Yes, I have finally joined the iPod generation and gotten myself an iPod Shuffle. I know lot of people don't see the point of iPod Shuffle - but for me it's perfect. I have my iTunes on suffle all the time anyway, and if I had 20 GB of music with me all the time I could never figure out what I want to hear. But Shuffle does for me what I want: it picks some random songs, and for me 150 songs or so is more than enough for one go.

So far, I'm absolutely loving it, and I only took it for a spin while going to the yoga class. It's tiny, it's light, it's pretty and the sound quality is pretty damn good. When I was younger I couldn't take a step without my walkman, I had to have it everywhere. At some point I stopped listening to music so much, and I didn't need to have it on 24 hours a day - but walking to yoga class today while listening to Barenaked Ladies and George Michael and Tori Amos brought it all back. Yep, loving it.

Feeling blue

Blah. I feel miserable today, maybe even desperate. This job thing is really getting me down, and I can start to feel the noose slowly getting tighter. After last week's yet another promising lead, it seems that since I haven't heard anything back, I'm back to square one again.

This may be the most difficult thing I've ever done.

Forget moving to another country, or another continent - finding a job in a place where I seem to be doing everything wrong, and I don't even know why. Today I was on-line for hours, and I couldn't find even one place to send my resume.

So as a result, all other aspects of my life are affected. Today I picked food over yoga which I knew was the wrong decision, still I did it. Seems that beginning of a week is getting more and more difficult for me, to get back to the groove and get out of the house and being active. I was thinking about going to see my doctor this week and tell her that I'd like to phase out my medication - now I'm reconsidering that.

It feels that when yoga is the main focus of my life I'm happy, calm and balanced. I feel energetic, alive, vibrant. When the job hunt is the main focus I'm the opposite: anxious, needy and almost in torpor, very inactive and even going to the shops to buy food seems like streching it. Leaving the difficult job search and concentrating what seems to be good for me seems to be the obvious answer for me - on the other hand that would be just avoiding the problem, and dispite everything I'm not, and I refuse to be, a quitter. And it still seems that this is, somewhere down there, something I want to do for myself - although I admit freely that motivation often comes from thinking what other people want or expect of me.

Victoria day

Dum-de-dum.

I wish I could say something about how useful I was today and how much I got done - but any of those would a just a big lie. It's Victoria Day today in Canada, therefore a holiday - for some reason Canadians still celebrate Queen Victoria's (1837-1901) birthday. Or I guess I shouldn't be too surprised - it's a holiday, so any excuse is welcome, might as well be ole Vic's birthday.

And I've had the joy of having Dragon at home too today - three days in a row, that must be some kind of a record. So we spent the day doing absolutely nothing - I chatted with Chu, we watched some wrestling, took a long nap... We were supposed to have a gaming night with Laura and Clay but unfortunately that got cancelled.

I almost forgot - something useful actually did happen. I found my passport and drivers' license - I thought I might had lost them few weeks back and was very relieved to find them. I had put them "in a safe place" - you know one of those places that are are safe even from yourself. Now that I have located it, I can actually start to apply for a new one, and I could do this well ahead this time, for a change - my current passport exipers in December. It's going to be strange - I'm one of those rare Finns who still have a blue pre-EU passport, and I'm actually attached to it.

Execute Plan 66

Well, with Laura and Clay, we ended up going to see the movie every one is talking about. Personally, I've never been a huge Star Wars fan, so I've never felt that all the new movies violated me personally like many of my fanatical friends think. For me they are just a bit of lighthearted entertainment, good or bad.

And I actually quite liked Revenge of the Sith. Firstly, it had the best special effects I've ever seen, they were just amazing. Every time Yoda came on screen I just totally forgot that he was cgi - I just wanted to stroke his hair. I liked the story, how it tied all the new movies to the old ones, I especially liked the finishing scenes where they explain why all the characters from the original movies ended up where they were. There were some beautiful touching scenes, especially when all the Jedis are betrayed and killed - that scene had a very fitting soundtrack. Hayden Christensen had grown up a lot since the last movie and mostly potrayed his difficult character very well. And Yoda - finally they put the spotlight on him. I've never liked Yoda too much in the original films, now I'm a huge fan. The fighting scenes were beautiful, even more so in the fantastic settings like in the middle of the lava flows.

With all of that, I found it easy enough to dismiss all the bad things about the movie. Dialog is not only atrocious, it's in many places inappropriate - like Jedis joking in the middle of the battle. It was full of age old cliches that most directors would avoid like the plague, and George Lucas definetly doesn't murder his darlings. Lucas likes comedy - but doesn't have the appropriate skill to introduce it to the places it needs to be, instead he puts it in the middle of serious scenes that should be even scary. There were big holes in the plot, and Lucas likes to hint to backround stories that he hasn't had time to put into the film but that he loves - like the weird hybrid droid General Grievous (and don't you just hate the name?).

But I'm not complaining. I got my $8 worth.

Art of making bread

I written about bread before, but only about buying and eating it (and Dragon could probably write a book about it too). But I also love baking bread, and nothing beats well made fresh bread that's just come from the oven. Years ago, back in my student days in Nottingham, I used to make all the bread we ate until my wrist couldn't take kneading anymore and I had to stop. Ever since I've been thinking about getting back to baking bread again - maybe if I had a bigger kitchen I could get a machine that would do most of the kneading for me.

At the moment I'm in the middle of a baking craze - when I was younger I used to bake quite a lot, especially cakes, but since I moved in with Dragon that all stopped as Dragon doesn't really like cakes (and if I ate it all myself... well, you know). So this week I took out my old and trusty baking book Suuri Leivontakirja - Kotilieden parhaat leivonnaiset to look trough some of my favourite cake recipes. But I came across some traditional recipes for rolls instead. So I got inspired and made some carrot rolls yesterday.

0.5 liters of milk or water
50 g live yeast - or dry instant yeast, for quantity look for instructions on the packet
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp honey
200 g raw shreadded carrot
1 dl wheat bran
~ 12 dl bread flour
3 tbsp oil

Many sources say that recepies are the most important thing when making bread - I disagree. I think nothing beats experience. Something will always be different in your kitchen compared to the person who wrote the recipe - be it flour, water, yeast... only you know how things work in your kitchen. So it takes a bit of time, but it's surprising how fast - after one or two loafs - you figure it out. Weights, measurements, timings, oven temperatures - they are not carved in stone unlike some books tell you.

There are some things you need to understand about chemistry behind bread making. Yeast loves warm, wet and sweet - but is not too keen on hot, cold or salt. Kneading is not just about mixing the incredients - it's about activating the gluten in flour that makes the texture of your bread, nothing else does this than the physical pummling of the dough. The reason I didn't include instructions for the carrot rolls is that all bread making instructions for any recipe can be broken down to these seven steps:

1. Mix flour, water (and other liquids), salt and yeast thoroughly. First mix yeast with sugar and little of the warm water and wait until it's frothy. Then what I do is put all the flour on the work surface and mix it with other dry incredients - then making a well in the centre of the heap where all the liquid goes.
2. Kneading for gluten. By hand, or course - and I find that using a work surface instead of a bowl works better for me. At first it may be difficult to figure out what the dough should feel like, so use your watch - this should take 7 to 8 minutes. At this time it's also important to observe the dough to make sure you're not putting too much (or too little) flour in it - it's quite normal that you need more or less than in the recipe. Dough is good to go when you can spread little out between your hands and it streches to a very thin skin without breaking (also called "window test"). The dough should be a little sticky at all times, as well as smooth and elastic.
3. Leave the dough to rise. Put in into an oiled bowl and cover with a cloth - if you put it into a warm place it will rise more quickly, but you can put it into the fridge too (only it will take days then). This can actually be quite useful too - you can put your dough into the fridge, then go out and take it only out when you're ready to bake it. The dough has risen enough when it's doubled in size.
4. Knocking the dough out again. This is done so that the bubbles that have formed are broken and can be distributed evenly. At this point you want to shape your dough - loafs or rolls, whatever you want.
5. Second rising. Again, leave for about half an hour in a warm place - this is also one of those things you need to practice with. Remember that bread doesn't rise in the oven anymore like cakes that use baking powder - so you need to let them rise enough to get nice and puffy bread.

6. Baking. Well, kind of obvious - for temperature and time, follow the instructions (for carrot rolls 225 C and 10 - 15 minutes) as a guideline but as always nothing beats experience. Generally bread is cooked when you tap the bottom of it with your finger and it sounds hollow - this can be difficult to judge in the beginning though, so use the recipe's guidelines and learn to judge what a good bread sounds like.
7. Cooling. Warm bread is delicious, but hot bread is disgusting - it's not set yet properly. So put it on a cooling rack and be patient!

I hope the instructions don't scare anyone - it's not my purpose to make you feel like you're going to fail totally the first time. I just think that most people try making bread at some point and it doesn't turn out too well, and they give up - but what they need to do is try again, the second time will be much better. Also one of my "tricks of the trade" I was using back in my bread making days was to take aside some dough - ball about size of a fist - and then next time mix it in with the previous batch (replacing about 10% of the flour in the recipe). You can store the dough ball in a plastic bag in the fridge - day or two, or until it smells too sour (I actually kept the dough ball in the fridge for a week and it was still fine, so it's not that difficult). This not only helps the rising process, it also gives the bread character.

I suggest you give it a try some day. Nothing beats fresh bread.

Disturbance in the force

Or lessons in non-judgement.

Today I experienced the weirdest yoga class ever. I was doing Shannon's Friday morning yin class, and firstly, it was the fullest yin class I've ever seen, and secondly, there were some teenagers there who quite obviously didn't want to be there. Now imagine this, you pay $15 for a class that you don't want to be on. Firstly I didn't even notice them - I was in the first row as I always am, and I was concentrating on myself. But at some point I started noticing unusual amount of people shuffling, going to the toilet, and I heard Shannon speaking to someone who didn't want to do a certain posture. There was some whispering, giggling - so I peeked during a down-dog. Yep, bunch of teenagers in their oversized jeans and baggy sweaters, with sour faces.

I kept wondering why Shannon didn't just ask them to leave - instead she kept her cool and kept saying things like "You don't want to do this posture? That's ok, join us when you want." (most of them were just sitting there not doing anything) or "If you don't want to do the postures, be respectful of those who do". Personally I was starting to get really annoyed, until about mid-way I started to think about non-judgement.

Those kids - and I imagined they were probably there to do a PE class or something like that and tried to get off easy... we've all been there! - were so afraid of failing or looking uncool that they covered their insecurities in giggles and pretence. They had difficulties sitting still, if help was offered at those rare times they attempted a posture they shrug it off a laugh. All signs of extreme lack of self-confidence.

They were rude and unrespectful - although not to a degree it would have been really distruptive - and still, in the end of the class when Shannon thanked everyone for coming, she especially thanked the teenagers and said that we all had our challenges. I was surprised they stayed for Navasana, but after that they were out like bullets. So I went to Shannon to ask what on earth was that all about, and she explained that there were actually Natalie's - one of our yogis - students, underprivileged kids who had been to jail, and they were trying to reintroduce them to the society. Nat had thought that yoga would be calming for them, and this was their second class.

So yes, they were annoying, but after that I was so glad that Shannon had taught me that lesson about non-judgement. I think her way of dealing with them was exactly what was needed: anger and dismissal has been the only language these kids have ever understood, and actually having a class full of calm adults who didn't scorn them for their actions but instead tried to help them was probably a rare experience. I would just hope they wouldn't be so afraid of trying out something like yoga - but that's probably quite far off in the future.

Impressive

One thing I have to say about or building management - it's fast! I filed the request for the dishwasher repairs last night, and after 10 this morning there was the property handymand outside our door coming to fix it. When he saw the dishwasher his first words were "ooh, that's bad" - then he opened the lower panel and spent 20 minutes trying to get the pump working.

Then he gave up and said that he had to check something and left, only to return half an hour later saying that it couldn't be fixed and that they had to order a new one. Well that's perfect, in book - I never like this dishwasher anyway: it's old and noisy and has never washed very well. The handyman then took the dishwasher out and promised that the new one should be coming in next week.

Not a bad result at all - but I wish the new machine would come sooner rather than later... as you can see from the photo on the right the dirty dishes are starting to gather already.

In da House

Still no news.

Except from the balcony - almost all of the lilies have now emerged, I think I have one more that's hiding. Difference between different varities is quite big - the first ones appeared almost two weeks ago now. It's been raining quite a lot - which is all nice for plants, but a little warmth wouldn't hurt either.

In addition, the dishwasher seems to finally kicked the bucket. It's never been the best washer in the first place, but within past week or so it's started making funny klonking noises and smelling. Today when I opened it up after a wash it hadn't drained the water in the bottom (luckily it hasn't leaked). I filled in a pink slip (maintenance request) and hope for a quick resolve - meanwhile it means I'm the dishwasher. Makes one think differently about using lot of plates.

So while it's raining I've been spending lot of time indoors - on the computer looking for job opportunities and on the sofa watching House. In case you haven't seen it - it's a medical who-dunnit starring the charismatic Hugh Laurie who plays the cranky Dr. House, a head of diagnostics, who solves mysterious medial cases with his team. If you love the likes of CSI and ER, you will love this one - it's an interesting mix of both.

House: I also recognize that I am human and capable of error.
Dr. Wilson: So you might have screwed this up?
House: No.
Dr. Wilson: So it's merely a theoretical capacity for error?
House: Good point. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe that's my error.

But it's not really the content that matters (and I can't believe I just said that) - it's how it's implemented. Solving the case is not the issue - and it doesn't always happen anyway - the acting, especially by Hugh Laurie who is brilliant, is superb, and the dialog is witty and clever - and if I remembered half of it I'd be so much funnier in this entry. So at first I took it as just that, little bit of clever amusement - but when the characters started to develop, it's been a really good piece of drama too. Next week is the season finale, but the whole season has been simply masterful.

Hunting

For some reason I've felt very tired today - went to Granville Island to buy some tea and food, only to find out that I had left my debit card at home. So didn't splash out then, I only had $15 on my person. Day was gray and after getting home and eating last of my bean tomato soup I just fell asleep on the sofa. After waking up I decided I was too spaced out to go to yoga, I would look for a job, meditate and do some yoga at home.

Then I almost got excited about the job hunt. Applied for some jobs I actually think I have a chance of getting, at least in theory - but then again if the past is anything to be learned from I know what's going to happen. I've started to think that the job adverts that I see are actually just a tiny minority of jobs out there, that the real job market is controlled by networking or certain agents or something like that. Seems almost like an impossible task.

I've been listening to my teacher Brian Ruhe's meditation CD, and it is facinating. This is not my first contact with Buddhism - in fact I first got excited about it when I was still at school and my class (elämänkatsomustieto - I don't even start guessing what that would be in English) went to visit the Buddhist center in Helsinki. That really affected me, and I would have wanted to go back there again and maybe start learning about meditation - but my friends pretty much talked me out of it. They thought that I was just about to join into some weird religious group - and I never thought of it as an religion in the first place. I guess I was lucky to have friends that cared about me enough to take a stance - and I forgot about the whole thing pretty quickly.

Thoughts

Still waiting to hear news about the old company I used to work for - I'm due to some money and dispite promises to contact me over the weekend there's still no news. So I had a chat with Alan, a former colleague of mine from those days, someone I used to be really good friends with. And once again I felt the sting of missing someone dear, and we were just chatting about life and families, and of course sci-fi and other geeky stuff, all very important in their own little ways.

In the midst of all that, I did manage to send two job applications - I'm still going through the motions although I've practically lost my hope at this point. For one reason or another, my services are not needed and I don't know if there's a way over it. At least if I was talking to someone... but as long as my applications don't even deserve "no thank you"'s I can do nothing but grit my teeth.

Life feels better though - one night last week we had a "what do you want from life" kind of conversation with Dragon which has kind of cleared my head. It's become quite clear to me that my life is now going into a very different direction than it was, say, a year ago. I'm not quite sure when this change started - possibly year or two ago, but it has certainly started to take shape within past six months or so. For example - I took that Personality Defect Test like most other people, only to discover that it thought I was a hippie (42% Rational, 71% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 28% Arrogant.):

You are the Hippie! Characterized by a strong sense of extroversion, irrationality, gentleness, and humility, you no doubt frolic through fields preaching peace and love to all! You are probably either very spiritual or needlessly paranoid about "the man", like most hippies, as a result of your focus on intuition and feelings over cold, brutal logic. You are also very, very social. And like any hippie, who would have no qualms about hitchiking across the country just to meet some interesting people, you too love to interact with others, even complete strangers. Because we know most any hippie is peace-loving and humble, it stands to reason that you, as well, are terribly gentle and humble, almost to the point of revulsion. Your carefree attitude of peace and harmony is probably very, very sickening to realists or cynics or anyone who isn't a hippie, to tell the truth. In short, your personality is defective because you are overly emotional, extroverted, gentle, and humble--thus making you an annoying hippie. And you listen to psychadelic rock and smoke a whole lot of pot. Okay, maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised if you did.

My first thought was - I'm so not a hippie, I'm a Haughty Intellectual like Orava or Moira. Then I read the description again, and while I still deny smoking pot and listening to psychedelic rock, it's not that far from how I view myself these days. I used to think that knowing everything and learning all possible information was key to self-fulfillment - I was and wanted to be a scientist, rational and cool-headed.

But to tell you the truth, most of the time I was actually guided a lot more by my emotions than I am these days. I would get angry easily and get into heated conversations about things that weren't really that important. In fact, when I was trying to do the test trying to think how I was thinking maybe three or four years ago, my result was the psycopath - opposite of the hippie. I probably went a bit overboard with the answers - as I absolutely deny that analysis - but it gives me some kind of an idea of where I've come from.

I think now my goals are more inner goals about self-improvement - how to become a better person more than how to become smarter. It's helped me that I haven't been working - I've had the time to be with myself and re-assess my priorities. I'm thinking about doing things I would have never ever admitted to before, and I'm not actually afraid. I also feel more stable, emotionally - I'm stronger, calmer and more in tune with both my mind and my body. Feels like I'm taking the right steps.

Three minutes to Earth Death

I'm seriously loving the new Dr. Who. I watched the first episode Rose months ago when it leaked to the internet and thought it was quite interesting - but only got back to the series this week when I watched the second episode End of the World.

And that one blew me away - the richness of the world, the story, the characters, the costumes, make-up - and the acting, everything was top-notch. At this point I was sure Dragon wanted to see this too so I stopped watching and waited for him to watch rest of the episodes.

Firstly I have to say I absolutely adore Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor - he can be wacky, but also immensly delicately emotional. The relationship he has with Rose has the potential to be one of the best platonic relationships potrayed in TV since... well, probably Kirk and Spock. And yes, I happen to think Billie Piper (yes, the pop princess from 90's) is absolutely perfect as Doctor's assistant.

Someone pointed out that the series should be called "Rose Tyler and her adventures with the Doctor" and for me that's the point. The Doctor is familiar with time travel, he's familiar with the different times and cultures they meet on their adventures - so he needs Rose to experience them anew. And Billie Piper is perfect for this role - which is by the way superbly written - Rose is smart with her feet on the ground, curious, empathic and kind, emotional and loyal.

The new series keeps very nicely in the tradition and the athmosphere with the previous ones (which I have seen only very occationally I have to admit). But it also looks like they are going to go fairly deeply into the background story - there have been certainly some heavy hints being dropped. We've already heard about the Last Time War that was only experienced by higher beings and went unoticed by (us) lesser beings, the war that destroyed Daleks and Timelords, and the mysterious "Big Bad Wolf" has now been mentioned so many times that it has got to be significant.

Yes, at times it's silly - the pilot Rose is a classic silly Dr. Who episode, the two-parter Aliens of London was silly almost to the point of being ridiculous. But at other times, when it's not silly, it's piece of art like very touching Dalek, or emotionally charged beautiful Father's Day.

If you haven't checked out this series yet, I'd recommend you get downloading. It's fantastic and keeps getting better.

Mmm... cakes

Like I threatened, I baked some mini bundt cakes last night (and you just got to love that bouquet pan from NordicWare). Result was some green tea ginger cakes for breakfast this morning while watching Dr. Who - and I have to confess I ate three.

I was a bit dubious putting ginger in the cake - I know Dragon isn't a big fan of ginger, and even I thought the raw ginger might be too much. My mind changed though when I was making the cake mixture last night - the fresh fragrance of ginger and the wonderful spicy taste was nothing like ginger used in main courses. Baked, the taste of ginger is just refreshing, and not sharp at all.

If you want to try the recepie at home but you don't have any matcha powder, you can use normal green tea leaves - steep it with the tangerine juice (and drain, obviously). Similary, I didn't use tangerines as they're not in season - I used blood oranges instead, orange juice with ginger is just a fantastic combination. Thirdly - if using mayo in cakes seems weird, use yoghurt like I did (I happened to have vanilla yoghurt but anything would go, really).

Window shopping

I've been doing some shopping for Jaana-Mari, so I've been going to Robson a lot. And I've also done a lot of window shopping while there - this is got to be one of the best shopping streets I've ever seen. Today I finally went into this one shop that had the cutest embroided jeans on the windown - I've been inspired by Dragon's new handsome jeans and I'd really like to replace my current only pair of jeans that won't last for long. Very clever marketing trick from them - they don't actually have those particular jeans in the shop, but they can order them in (and you can only guess the price!). I did scout the other jeans they had - and of course the pair I wanted was the most expensive pair in the store with price tag of over $300. Even more expensive than the ones with Swarovski Crystals (and how on earth do you wash those anyway?!?). Sometimes I hate having such an expensive taste...

On my way back, I decided to stop at a newly opened restaurant called Enthuze to have a light lunch. I chose some Gyoza Nagoya (those little fried pockets with a meaty filling) and a glass of Thai iced tea. The tea arrived first - and I was expecting greenish tea, but it turned out to be light orange. From the colour I'd say it obviously had milk in it, and from the taste I'd say it's the same type of smoky tea you get in most oriental restaurants here when you step in. The combination made me feel ill - I've been on a no-lactose diet for some time now, and only this week moved into low-lactose diet and I'm having some yoghurt for breakfast that seems to be just fine. Just drinking cold milk was highly unpleasant and I suffered from a stomach ache until I got home and drank some green tea. Gyoza wasn't too exiting either - warm, not hot, the soy sauce was too strong and the taste was a bit underwhelming. The place was really nice though, it's a shame the food wasn't better.

Totoro, no whisk

I had the intention to "just quickly" pop to Chinatown to get some decently priced matcha powder so I could make some green tea ginger cakes over the weekend. I remember seeing some matcha powder at T&T - but when I got there all I could find was a strange mixture of matcha and green tea that could be nice too, but not what I was looking for this time.

Then I suddenly got the urge to find a matcha whisk too, so I headed deeper into Chinatown popping into numerous little shops selling everything between heaven and earth - but no bamboo whisk. After an hour of very interesting browsing - I managed to find several things I'd like to buy, like beautifully carved Mah Jong set made of bone (ivory? hope not) stored in a wooden box, authentic posters from the times of cultural revolution ($9.99), dragon embroided bath robe ($29.99) and about million cute teapots - it started to become very clear to me that I had made the same mistake again. Yes, I was looking for a Japanese bamboo whisk from Chinatown. After that realisation I felt really really dumb - I can't believe I was being this stupid again... Sounds a bit retarded, but it has taken me quite a long time to realise how different the cultures of each far eastern countries really are - and they don't all drink the same tea and eat rice.

I did manage to make some signifigant finds too - I got some green Dragonwell tea (Lung Ching) dirt cheap, and most importantly I found Totoros! I've always been so jealous of people who have been to Japan and seen the Studio Ghibli museum, and those cutest little Totoro soft toys - and to find them in Vancouver's Chinatown was a total surprise. So back to my mistake of trying to find Japanses utensils in Chinatown - so that's a bad idea, but it's totally possible to find stuffed Japansese toys of relatively obscure animations?

Right.

I'll have to come back to those Totoros later hoping they'll still be there - money is still a bit tight this month. After spending almost two hours just immersing myself into the athmosphere of Chinatown I decided to head home and get the match green tea mix from T&T - by now I'd gotten curious about it. So I went back to the huge tea selection they have - and there was matcha, right on my eye level... how I missed previously I have no idea. On my way to the til I also picked up a bag of green tea coated pumpkin seed (mmm... delicious!). So green tea-wise I'm pretty maxed out.

Vancouver Island travel report

I meant to write about the Vancouver Island trip over the weekend but ended up doing something completely different. Now I can't put it off anymore before I forget the details, and Dragon is back in California so it's the perfect time. I will include lot of details because as total newbies to the area we had some difficulties in finding all this information, so if this report can help someone else, all the better. It might even inspire some of our future guests to take a similar trip – it certainly comes highly recommended.

First of all, for those who're not familiar with British Columbia and it's geography, here's a map of Vancouver area so you get some kind of idea were we went. Vancouver is on the west coast of Canada, and west from Vancouver is Vancouver Island, a large island with lot of forest, mountains and other wilderness. The west coast of Vancouver Island boasts to be the "real West Coast" and it certainly has an entirely different feel to it.

On Tuesday we started from Vancouver when we took a bus to Horseshoe Bay where we got loaded into a ferry and travelled to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. In Nanaimo we rented a car and drove to the other side of the island to Ucluelet where we spent Wednesday. On Thursday we headed back to the east, stopping in Port Alberni and ended up in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. On Friday evening we took the bus from Victoria that drove us to Swartz Bay where we boarded a ferry to Tsawwassen, from where the bus took us back to Vancouver.

Getting there
But let's start from the beginning. We had decided to take the bus because that seemed to be the most common and the easiest way to Vancouver Island. We walked from home to the corner of West Georgia and Denman to catch the Greyhound bus – they had told us in that we should buy the tickets in advance which we had done, but it looked like some people actually paid on the bus. The trip took us to Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver – the trip had some magnificent scenery from the mountains, and only lasted about 20 minutes. At the Bay our bus drove pretty much directly into the ferry that was waiting for us, we boarded the ferry, left our belongings to the bus and hit the deck. While it was warm and nice while we were sitting there, when the ferry got moving it became quite windy so we went back inside. The ferry ride takes couple of hours so we had time to do some shopping, and reading brochures – the ferry itself is used mainly to transport people so it has a lot of seats inside where people spend their time reading books, drinking coffee and chatting. The sailing was incredibly smooth, so although I had gotten very nervous and taken a pill to prevent seasickness, there was absolutely no reason.

When we approached Nanaimo we got back to the bus that drove us to its depot which was very handy as Budget, the car rental company we had chosen was right next to it. Our car had been upgraded to a SUV – at first this seemed a bit of overkill for three people, but turned out that lot of extra room was actually very comfortable. I proved this by taking a nap on the back seat when leaving Nanaimo after eating a really tasty lunch in an Italian restaurant. I told my parents that they should wake me up if they saw something interesting – this happened about midway to Ucluelet when we drove though the MacMillan Provincial Park.

The place is called Cathedral Grove, and I've never experienced anything like it before. It's an ancient forest – the oldest trees are over 800 years old cedars. The forest was mostly destroyed in a forest fire about 300 years ago, so most big trees are around that age. The place is aptly named – it is like stepping to a huge cathedral where ceiling is up somewhere really high. When I woke up in the car I was cranky and cold and didn't feel like going to see any stupid forest, but it all changed as soon as I was in. The earth is soft with moss and ferns, and the trees are massive and they too have been draped in moss that hangs over them like fairies had placed it there. It's surprising how much light there is – those delightful sunny spots, and the green light coming trough the trees. I had the urge to touch everything, touch the trees, the moss, to make it more real – I hope I can give you a glimpse of the magic of the place.

After we got back to the car and continued the journey over the mountains. The winding road was very small and kept having these "slow down" signs that irked my dad who was driving. We didn't slow down to a halt however and managed to get to the other side – the weird thing that happened during the journey was that the weather changed totally. We started with a beautiful hot day, and on the other side of the mountains it was clouds all the way. There are two small towns on each side of Pacific Rim National Park – the more popular (and expensive) Tofino, and the quieter (and cheaper) Ucluelet with a population of 1500 people or so. We had chosen Ucluelet and Ebbtide B&B, which was right on the tip of the Ucluelet peninsula.

You Finns, you know the feeling when you come to your summer cottage for the first time each year. You step out of the car, and total silence surrounds you and you have to just stop and be still for a while to take everything in. Well, that's how I felt when we arrived to Ebbtide – we had a nice room directly overlooking the bay… but the stillness of everything. The sea was totally calm, and opposite it there was the matted gray cloudy sky – and you couldn't hear anything else but some distant birds. I think this is one of the places that has stayed with me ever since – my mind that returns there daily.

We chilled and unpacked for a moment, and then headed out to find something to eat. In a very small town like Ucluelet you can't be too picky – there are few restaurants to start with, and even fewer are open in the evening, so we picked just the one that looked full (so popular). We picked a little café called Mountain Boy – they had surprisingly big menu, although oysters and chowder where not available (my mom's two top choices) – we all picked sandwiches. But they turned out to be huge (but good) so instead of a light meal we had planned we dutifully stuffed our faces to best of our capabilities – my mom suggested that we should take the remains with us, but none of us wanted to eat them later either so we left it and headed back to the B&B. After the meal my dad headed out for a little walk, but I headed to a shower and the bed.

Ucluelet
First thing I remember of the morning was my mom whispering to me that it was raining and that we were going for a little walk before the breakfast, and me replying "are we now". My mom informed me that I didn't have to go which was good because it didn't sound very inviting – so instead I had a slow waking and dressing up which suited me just fine (at this point my parents were still slightly suffering from the jet-lag so they tended to wake up quite early). The gourmet breakfast the B&B had advertised turned out to be a bit strange – first half a grapefruit which was nice, but this was topped up with some lemon cake – delicious lemon cake, I admit – crepes with strawberry jam and a fried sausage. All nice in themselves, but together... and I won't even say anything about the nutritional values of the day's most important meal. It was clear to me at this point that I wasn't going to be able to maintain my diet on this trip – so I just needed to get all the calories when they were available.

After the breakfast we headed back to town thinking that we would book a whale watching tour for the afternoon – it wasn't raining anymore (and even when it did it was more like a mist), but it was still very cloudy and we were thinking that it would be nicer if it was sunny. But we were promptly told that the high fog offered actually the best possible conditions for whale watching – no glare from the sun and visibility for miles. So we were talked over to taking the trip immediately – the guide Lance had been recommended to us Rob, our B&B manager, as "a real naturalist and a nature lover". He was a jolly guy and obviously was very good as there was an older couple with us who had been with Lance three times previously. We dressed up in the handy orange flotation suits – they were also windproof which was very convenient. We then marched to the harbour and got into the small inflatable zodiac boat – there were about ten of us on the trip and we got to the front seats. Lance warned that ride got wildest in the front, but I had taken my nausea tablet and I wanted the good view.

We didn't get more than 100 meters from the harbour when we saw our first sea lions. Lance told us that they were Californian sea lion males squabbling over food or space (and making lot of noise while doing it – kind of barking sound) and searching for an easy meal from fishing boats – and they were also known to eat dogs that got too close.

When we got out to the open sea, we discovered a problem. The fog was not high as it had appeared from the shore – it was actually very low and therefore visibility was extremely poor. Haunting, stunningly beautiful, but poor for whale watching. The problem was also that we were at the very end of the Gray whale migrating season and most of the whales had already passed – there were still few around but the low fog was making the search quite a bit more difficult than Lance had expected. Many of the other whale watching companies offer a "guaranteed sighting" – if no whales show up, they give a you another trip for free – Lance didn't have this guarantee: he builds his tours around the nature around the area and takes people to see sea lions, otters, eagles and other animals – and in his words "whales happen when they happen". This suited us very well – for us this was it: if we didn't see whales today, we were leaving the next day and wouldn't be able to attend another trip anyway. So at least we would get to see something, if not whales.

After seeing some more Californian sea lions and failed to see any whales, we ventured to the Broken Group Islands which is a group of over 100 small rocky islands about 20 minutes from Ucluelet by boat. I keep saying this, and I hope it doesn't sound too clichéd – but this place will stay with me (or is it that I left part of myself there?). The group is part of the park and access to the area is limited by permission – the area really is as it has been for thousands of years. Untouched, rugged – and the day we were they engulfed in think fog that didn't show anything until we got really close. It was breathtaking how the small islands would appear from the fog – the high cliffs, the twisted sitka fir trees, pristine beaches full of driftwood. And nowhere could you see people or any signs of them – the place is mostly populated by seabirds. These are ancient lands – the first nation people had lived here for thousands of years before they were dispelled by the white man.

Here we also saw endangered Steller's sea lions – very different to their American cousins. Californians gathered here in big groups of young males, while the Stellers' were in large family groups headed by a large male, the beach master. The Californians didn't care if we came close, as long as they got an advance warning that we were coming – the Stellers' looked us suspiciously, making some baaing sounds, but when the beach master started making angry sounds, Lance took the warning and got us away immediately. The seals were very cautious too – when we got close to them the most nervous ones jumped to the sea.

We were still hoping to see some whales – and all the boats on the area were keeping the lookout for them. All other guide boats would let us know if they saw any – as we would have if we saw them first – and so would have the fishing boats. The radio kept silent for an hour or so, and then we got a message that a whale had surfaced and then disappeared - but hoping for the best Lance took us back to the sea. However we weren't lucky – we continued searching for some time still, and didn't return until we were over an hour overdue. Lance said that in 98% of the cases his tours would encounter whales and was a bit shamed that it hadn't happened – but we were not too disappointed, the trip had after all been a huge experience.

After we had escaped the flotation suits we were quite hungry. Fellow guests we encountered at the breakfast table at the B&B had recommended the Wickaninnish beach and the restaurant outside Ucluelet, so we decided to take the no-brainer and just go there. In the harbor and on the road the weather was wonderfully clear and sunny, but when we got back to the beach the fog swallowed us again. The beach was a sight in itself, and the restaurant was a mid price-range place with a limited menu – we enjoyed the food though, and the view of the foggy beach was like from a dream. After checking out the little museum dedicated to local cultural history we headed back to the B&B to rest. Well, I had a proper nap – it's possible that the exhaustion on both days had partly something to do with Gravol, the anti-nausea drug I was taking.

When I woke up later in the evening I was rested again and we decided to go for another walk in Wild Pacific Trail, the rainforest my parents had seen in the morning when I was sleeping. And what can I say but – wow. Yet another totally mind-blowingly amazing place and a state to be. The forest itself wasn't as impressive as Cathedral Grove, it wasn't as old – but it was totally different in character, being just on the edge of the sea. So maybe I should say it was impressive in another way – while the trees in Cathedral Grove were huge cedars, here they were warped salt-resistant sitkas and small hemlocks – totally different trees, totally different experience. And of course there was the sea and the sunset – different sights and sounds and smells altogether.

East Coast of West Coast
Another morning at Ebbtide started with another gourmet breakfast. After the previous morning we were really unsure what to expect – but we were hoping something relatively normal. No such luck – this time was some fruit salad, some muffins – and French toast: two slices of white bread, toasted with mascarpone cheese between them, and caramelised bananas on the top, served with hot maple syrup. Delightful treat in itself, but breakfast? Beggars can't be choosers – we gulped it up expecting for another long day.

And long day it was. We started it buy going to see the world-famous Long Beach which surfers love – my mom intended to go for a swim, but all the warning signs scared us off the idea ("Is it safe to swim here? NO!"). While leaving Ucluelet I was staring out of the car window thinking about taking a nap, when my gaze came upon an animal down on the beach. "A bear, a bear!" I started yelling and my dad put the breaks on. I couldn't believe my eyes until we turned back and walked on the side of the road to the spot where I'd seen it, but there it was: a real, wild, black bear. It was a bit unsure of us staring at it and kept rocking slowly back and forth – but it didn't look distressed or angry (and this is mine and my mom's opinion, not shared by my dad!). Anyway we stared at it for maybe a minute or two before we respected it's wildness and left it alone.

There seems to be something tiring about crossing those mountains to get to the other side of the island, as I slept most of the journey again. We stopped at Port Alberni to have lunch in a local seafood restaurant where I and my mom had some clams and mussels. We headed for the highway there, hoping to come across a winery along the way to Victoria – we had drank some wine from Vancouver Island on Sunday so the idea had born then to visit a winery while there. This was easier said than done though – there were plenty of signs pointing to various wineries but after following several of those we never seemed to find any them. Finally we came to a crossroad where we had to decide if we wanted to go back and try one more time, or continue to Victoria – and by a whim decided to give the hunt one more go.

This time the hunt was awarded with a real find – on the other hand we happened to pick the only one of the orchards that didn't make wine, but cider – but on the other hand it was a brilliant find as it's one of the only orchards in North America that's dedicated to growing apples only for making cider. The place was called Merridale Estate Cidery – and the apple trees were in bloom and the day was absolutely gorgeous – we took the self guided tour around the estate, found out all the different stages of making cider before continuing inside for a taster. And I have to say, without the tasting, I don't think we would have necessarily bought anything – but with it we bought many different types forgetting totally that we would be leaving the car to Victoria and would have carry them all to the bus and back home. My favourite was a Winter Apple Cider, a deliciously sweet dessert wine with smooth and strong natural apple taste.

Rest of the journey to Victoria was eventless, and we found our hotel quite easily as it was on Douglas, the main road leading to Victoria city center. After the sweaty tiring journey we took the advantage of the hotel pool and jacuzzi – but the water in the pool was so warm it didn't really have a refreshing effect... relaxing though. My dynamo-parents left the hotel to look around the city, but I was beat and stayed at the hotel room watching Smackdown.

Victoria
On Friday morning we had hopes of getting a proper breakfast – only this time there was nothing wrong with the breakfast itself but the location. The breakfast at the hotel was served in the adjacent sports bar – all the TVs on sports channels isn't really my ideal place for breakfast, even if the breakfast is Eggs Benedict.

Our plan was to get our stuff into storage at the bus station, get bus tickets to Vancouver, return the car and then have a wonder around the town. The plan went smoothly, and we wandered around the harbour seeing the most important land marks like the Parliament House and the Empress Hotel. This city is a total mix of North America and old fashioned England – at places it's more English and England and on others it's most typical North American. Feel is very different to neighbouring Vancouver: in many ways there's much more history here, like in England – but in other ways it's more superficial: there are lots of very visible tourists here, lot of loud, fat Americans and hordes of Koreans – they must exist in Vancouver too, but there everyone just blends in.

On the last day the weather wasn't on our side – and by early afternoon we were cold and tired enough to want to take an earlier bus than we previously thought. It was a relief to get to the bus – it would be clear sailing from here on. It took about an hour for the bus to get to Swartz Bay where the familiar boarding to the ferry happened – this time all we wanted was a nice place to sit down, so we grabbed good seats and had tea and coffee and cake while listening to a man who had been sitting in the bus next to us playing Irish bag pipes on the deck. Nothing significant about the trip – sailing was smooth as ever again, bus trip to Vancouver effortless.

Final words
What comes to nature and three day trips – I don't think I've ever experienced anything as spectacular as this little tour. If you're in the area and want to see something completely different, I can't recommend enough that you visit Vancouver Island.

Mind and body

I seem to be having difficulties getting back to speed with my life. I've eshtablised back into routine that doesn't involve entertaining guests or preparing for them - back to doing lots of very satisfying yoga, if nothing else. Unfortunately I had to give up my meditation class yesterday as I was the only student there - the meditation classes were an experiment Flow Yoga was running and for now it failed miserably. But fortunately my teacher - I call him affectionally "my monk" - teaches around West End so I'll be able to continue studying with him weekly. I'm still not prepared to say anything more on my personal progress, except that it has been mind-opening.

I've been mainly concentrating on healthy living again. Going back to Dragon's diet, and getting enough steps means I've done lot of window shopping. I've been inspired by the latest WWE Divas Magazine - which is much better than last year's - and I really really want a new fashionable bikini, especially because by the time it's bikini time I'm going to be in shape for it. My inspirational photos are mostly these:

Ivory - style of bikini I'd like, and I wouldn't mind those nicely sculpted arms either. This is another very popular style: a bit bit retro and big flower patterns - and I seem to be going trough a green phase at the moment.

Joy - I love those little panties, and Joy obviously has the cute little bottom to carry them off, check out her other photos too as they have some other cute panties.

Stacy - I love that swimsuit, but swimsuits generally seem to be very much out this season. Shame in a way, but I prefer a bikini this summer anyway.

Christy - I just love that photo, and the drawstring bikinis are quite popular... and I love this photo too, but now way I'm going swimming in that one!

And not to forget my girl Torrie - she's as gorgeous as ever. A bit of glitter never hurt anyone.

Anyway - still time to decide.

It's a jungle out there

At first I couldn't believe my eyes, but I really saw a skunk just now, few meters from one of downtown's busiest streets. And sorry about the photo - you may have to take my expert word on it as I only had my cameraphone with me.

It's alive, it's alive!

Practicing together

I thought today would be more productive than yesterday, but I thought wrong. I spent to morning watching nature and human developmental study documentaries (read: cute babies) while Dragon was IRCing. When Chu called we switched over - I took the computer "just for a moment" as Chu was already supposed to be in bed already, and Dragon took the livingroom to play God of War. After three or so hours of talking Chu finally was too tired to speak coherently and I looked at my watch - it was almost six o'clock and the day was pretty much over although I was still in my pyjamas (I think the word in Finnish is roikistella - see darling, I remember!).

Worry not, I thought, at least we would get out of the house today as Flow Yoga has started a new yin class on Sunday evening (on my request, I might add), and we had decided to attent. I really mean we, as after trying yin few weeks back Dragon was actually interested in doing some more. Our teacher was Shannon, and I wasn't quite sure what Dragon would think of her style - even I'm not sure, her classes are all so different - but they got along like a house on fire. It's strange - you really need a yoga teacher that is compatible with you, and I would have thought Jason being a man and having more relaxed attitude would have been right up Dragon's alley. But it turned out Shannon with her more unconventional and more yang-oriented yin practice was more to Dragon's liking. Most important thing of course is that you find the right teacher that has a similar attitude towards practicing than you do.

While Dragon was changing I was chatting to Shannon when she said - in a slightly sad tone - that I was so lucky that I was able to practice with my husband. I smiled, but it didn't hit me until later that she was actually right. I've wanted to practice with Dragon for ages - I thought I'd like to share with him my hobby and make him see why it is so important to me. But that's probably just some of the reason - other reason is what Shannon meant: it's also about the more spiritual level (and I use the word spiritual because it's the closest I can think of - not meaning some kind of God-ly thing but a higher mental connection). I've wanted to bond with my partner while doing a spiritual practice, even if we're both on different spiritual journeys. Being there with him, sharing the practice with him really meant a lot to me. And I hope to be able to do it again, soon.

Saturday party

I'd like to say that for our first Saturday morning alone since I don't remember when we slept late - truth is we woke up ridiculously early for some reason... at least we didn't get up before nine. Everything was peaceful - we ate breakfast while watching Smackdown (no, honestly, it was peaceful), and just took it easy - I spent several hours chatting to Henri on Yahoo and we left to do some shopping around noon.

I've been thinking about spending some money I should come to any day now, and we agreed in January that once that happened we should buy one of those recordable DVD players with a hard drive. Currently my favourite is Sony's RDRHX900 - despite promising myself earlier that I wouldn't get their DVD players anymore. However, this player has a big hard drive, eats any format DVDs, seems to be getting decent reviews - and the model I was previously considering (a Panasonic) has gotten horrific usability complaints from may of it's users, one of my pet hates. So we went to local Sony Store to have a look at it, and it seems indeed sweet. One of these days...

On our way back we stumbled across a Marihuana Party demonstration on Denman (so if you see any photos of us with it, it was only because we were walking the same way!). The demonstration was mostly full of hippies of all ages, and was of course followed by a thick could of smoke. Vancouverites have a very relaxed attitude towards pot, and most shopkeepers and customers stood outside smiling (if not cheering). Call me a stiff - but personally I don't see any reason for legalising a substance that does harm to individuals and possibly to the community. I recon large part of Vancouverites likes to puff now and again - but less would like to legalize it, and even less people would actually vote for a single issue party like BC Marihuana Party. We'll see what happens on May 17th when they hold the provincial elections here.

Missing already

After whole two hours of enjoying the peace and quiet after my parents had departed towards Finland, I was already missing them terribly. As an antidote I finally started going trough the Vancouver Island trip photos for a gallery, and after several hours of choosing and editing, here it is. They say picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case I don't think even pictures will be enough to convey some of experiences on this trip. I'll try to make some time tomorrow and write a proper travel report.

Forest life

I'm telling you I'm having a hard time keeping up with my folks!

Almost as an afterthought they decided that they wanted to visit one of the local national parks on their last day, and chose Lynn Canyon Park, one of the smaller and less known parks in North Vancouver. My dad planned the trip (and I have to say it's nice that someone else does that for a change!) and we set off after nine, picking up some food from Safeway along the way. We took the seabus from Coal Harbour to North Vancouver and a bus from there, and set on exploring the park.

One of it's highlights is a small suspension bridge - which is free, unlike in Capillano - that was pretty cool, and would have been even cooler without the group of Japanese tourists yapping and yelling who were there at the same time we were. Forest itself was very different to the ones we visited on Vancouver Island - this one is only about 100 years old after "the Europeans" (as they call them here) cut off all the thousand year old trees that used to be here. Still, it has been a national park for the past 90 years so it was still pretty old.

We gave up the hope of seeing any racoons pretty soon after seeing all the people who let their dogs off the leash there (which was - of course - forbidden), but had high hopes for seeing some banana slugs we had seen pictures of drawn by a group of local school children. We knew two things about this creature: the guide called it "aptly named" and the children were delighted about them and had indeed coloured them all yellow. So, you'd think it would be easy peasy to find a yellow slug in a forest. You'd be wrong, it turned out - it was probably too warm (about 20 C) and too dry for the slugs, so they remained hidden - but also bright yellow is quite the usual colour in the forest floor when sun peeks trough the leaves. We did finally manage to find two, and it is quite an impressive sight as you can see from the photo right.

As we were walking back we came across a delightful notice: they were presently filming Stargate: Atlantis in the park. I have to say the thought had crossed my mind when entering the park there was a big "crew parking" arrow sign on the side of the road, but I later put it down to the Fire and Rescue Service who were training on the cliffs. I had secretly hoped it would have been Stargate itself so I might have been able to get a glimpse of the lovely Mr. Browder, but Atlantis was third on my list (after Galactica, of course).

After couple of more steps we came across a thick fog - smoke machine! I screamed hopefully which made my mom laugh - and it turned out I was right! You know all that fog in Stargate? Well, it isn't really in the forest naturally, they have this huge white plastic pipe going on the edge of the forest with holes in it, and a guy at the end of it stuffing smoke into it - get the idea from the photo on the left. We passed a set in the forest, a wardrobe van, a generator, lot of trucks and the catering - unfortunately didn't get a glimpse of the delightful Mr. Flanigan. Still a treat for a sci-fi nutter like myself.

The tea day

Me and my mom named today in advance as "the tea day". My mom has been looking for a new teapot, so I took her to Teaz on Granville - they have a really nice selection of practical teapots (lot of the ones we've seen so far have been pretty but impractical). My mom liked the selection - however there was no perfect ten so we moved on to Granville Island to meet Mark and Debbie at the Granville Island Tea co. They don't sell pots, but they sell tea - enormous amounts of it.

My good fortune continues - when I come there it's all empty, but within minutes the whole place fills up and rush hour starts. Same today, so Mark and Debbie didn't have that much time to chat - but we tasted and smelled some nice teas once again. My mom fell in love with the most expensive tea in the shop - the Organic Orchid Oolong - this tea is grown among orchids and harvested when the flowers are in bloom and has a wonderful delicate taste. As most other our visitors she got some blueberry rooibos, and among other things some lapsang souchong which can be difficult to find in Finland - but in all her preference has been very much into Chinese teas.

When we went to Chinatown the other day, we got several different types of rare Chinese teas which we have been sampling since. By far the most interesting one of these has been Pu Erh - tea which is sometimes classified as red tea although Chinese themselves call it black (and what we call black tea they call red - go figure). The colour of Pu Erh is dark ruby red though - especially when you pour it into your cup - but in the cup it's really black, like Coca Cola - so I can understand both names.

But the taste. First we weren't quite sure what to make of it - it's definetly different to any other tea I've tasted. The smell is very earthy - and for me it takes me back to walking in the rainforest on the edge of the sea. Something about the rotting wood and the seaweed... may sound weird or unpleasant, but after couple of cups we totally fell in love with it. Maybe only for a connoisseur but definetly recommmended if you want to try something different.

Pu Erh - also spelled puerh, Pu'Erh, Pu-Erh - can be found as loose leaf, but can also be stored differently to most other teas. It's often dried in the sun, then the leaves are steamed and pressed into cakes, and often aged for at least a year, but anything up to 40 years. Mark even gave my mom a little nest-shaped cake as a gift from his own stash (in the photo). Pu Erh is also esteemed in Chinese medicine and is said to aid digestion, stimulate nerves and is said to be great for losing weight - we didn't notice any weird side effects though, but agreed that it's not a tea you want to drink every day.

Day off

Today has been my day off parenting the parents.

I love having them here, but as they are on holiday and want to see everything that's left on their list, let me just tell you that they keep on going at a pace that would exhaust a teenager.

So today I set them on their way to see the Anthropological Museum at UBC as I've seen that twice now in a short space of time, and set on doing my things. Which included meditating (pat on the back), sleeping, surfing the net, watching Star Trek (go me) and sending another job application.

In the evening I had time to go to yoga - it's been awhile again. It was yin, and I got to explore some postures I have been thinking about. Since the Paul Grilley workshop I've been looking at my practice in an all new different way, and especially in yin I'm questioning all the time how I should do them. I've gone to the extremes in inward rotation to explore better postures for me, and trying different alternative postures for some of the outwardly rotating postures that are just torture for me. It's taken time, but I'm starting find a very personal practice that is hand-tailored just for me, and works for no-one else's body but mine. I think eventually I want to do the same thing with ashtanga - only that's going to be much more subtle adjusting.

I had a very short chat with Kirstin about the teacher training, and she said that even if I didn't decided to be a yoga teacher - the course would never be wasted time. So the thought process continues.

Path to enlightenment

Apparently Flickr decided to send now all the entries I sent last week but which didn't appear earlier - I've put them to their cronological order and apologise for the confusion.

My parents are of the determined type - even though the weather was a bit miserable they wanted to continue their tour of Vancouver. My dad went to buy some shoes while I gossiped with Chu, and we joined him later with my mom and went to see the steam clock in Gastown. That's a weird piece of "mock history" as far as I know - some sources say that it was actually built in 1977, others call it the "oldest steam clock in the world" - as it's probably the only one, both might be true. How does a clock work with steam, I hear you say - or even "why would you want a clock to work with steam". The answer is, I don't know why - but it's still quite entertaining: every 15 minutes it chimes a little tune (same as Big Ben, of course) and lets off lot of steam.

Then we proceeded to Chinatown, and went for a meal in a typical Chinatown restaurant: cheap, plentiful and good food, and absolutely no glamour. The place was full of Chinese and we didn't much hear English - still we got all the service necessary. After the meal we went to buy some tea - finally tried Puh Er tea, but more on that later - and then we went to see Dr. Sun Yat-Sen which was as lovely as ever, only I seem to be destined to see it only when it's raining. At least it wasn't as cold as last time.

The evening was topped off with my first ever Buddhist meditation class at Flow Yoga. Very interesting experience, we tried walking meditation, breath meditation and loving kindness meditation - all very different. I feel like I want to say a lot on the subject but I can't find the words right now. Or maybe the experience is so personal that I can't share it with anyone.

Dragon diet

DISCLAIMER: The info below is my personal opinion on dieting and exercising, and I don’t claim to be a guru that knows all there is to know about these subjects. Feel free to disagree, but be warned: I passionately believe I am right about the subject.

I’ve gotten fair few inquiring emails about kolibri’s diet, so I thought I’d jot down my basic principles on how I approach my diet and lifestyle. I hope some of you find this helpful, or at least entertaining.

Since I have a keen interest in nutritional science, I’ve read thousands of diets over the years. And guess what… most of them work, as they simply instruct you to cut down the amount of calories you consume. Consequently you lose weight, though at great cost since starving yourself and denying your cravings is stressful and physically hard. Problem isn’t that diets don’t work, the problem is that no normal human being can stay on a diet for long. Therefore the dieters pack on the weight they lost almost as soon as they end their diets since they simply return to their old eating habits.

Therefore, you must chance they way you eat and make a permanent lifestyle change in order to control your weight once and for all. Who wants to be stuck in an endless loop of dieting and bingeing?

Most of the people trying to use diets fail because diets are simply too extreme. Living like a monk is simply not possible for most of us: it takes iron willpower to completely give up on your favourite foods. Dieting non-stop also requires almost completely stress-free existence, and I cannot remember a single year of my adult life that was not filled with enormous amounts of stress.

So what is the way to keep your diet clean and stop your waistline expanding you ask? Here are Dragon’s top tips on how to change your diet and your lifestyle with maximum gain for minimum effort.

1 Eat six small meals a day instead of three big ones

There is really nothing complicated about this: Just cut your lunch and dinner into two smaller servings, and eat small breakfast and light evening meal instead of the usual three huge meals after starving yourself for hours that is the basis of the bizarre western tradition known as “three square meals”.

There are many reasons why this will allow you to keep your fat under control: Eating several meals a day keeps your metabolism going, so you burn fat even without trying. Keeping the hunger at bay by nibbling at smaller meals every few hours means that the unstoppable craving to eat two tons of ice cream and sixteen cheese cakes is relatively rare as you are sated for most of the day.

As for the content of the meals, you should favour proteins and low amount of fats over carbohydrates. Chicken, tuna, salmon, beef, turkey, eggs and beans are all your friends. Side salads with little dressing are great too, but piling ten kilos of potatoes and white rice on your plate will be your downfall (see below). Fruit in moderation, oatmeal, cottage cheese and cereals high in fibre are good to mix up your meals.

I’m not even gonna list all the foods that are bad for you: sufficient to say that if you eat portions of food consisting of lard, salt and sugar, you really know already you are on a wrong course.

2 Find an exercise that you like and stick to it

It is no secret to my readers that I prefer lifting weights above all other exercises, but I definitely understand that this is not for everyone. Whatever it’s aerobics, bicycling, yoga, swimming, running or fencing, the most important thing is to do it regularly, at least three times a week. On top of this, use your legs whenever you are able. Walk to work, take stairs and travel to the shops on foot rather than taking a car. 10 000 steps per day is a healthy average for a human being. Buy a pedometer and find out how close to this you come, and adjust accordingly.

3 Banish the White Enemies from your diet

White bread, white rice and sugar are the bane of the waistline, the enemy of sane fat percentage and the nemesis of visible abs. Why is this you ask? Are fats not the real enemy? Well, not exactly. While eating tubs of butter with a spoon might indeed pack on the pounds, the “fast carbs” are the true villains of this story, and these three Great Whites are the reason of more obesity than all the fat in the world combined. White rice, sugar and white bread are highly processed foods that get converted to glucose faster than you can say “Mr. Creosote”. These nasty white things give you insulin spikes big enough to impale an elephant, and cause you to store masses of calories you consume as fat.

Since I am self-confessed addict of all the above, I’ve had to find substitutes: Brown rice, black and brown bread, and moderate amounts of fruits tend to handle my cravings. Just this single change in diet is often enough to make an enormous difference in people’s weight. How do you achieve this, you ask? Very simple: do not buy any of the above for your home, save for a little sugar for your more festive occasions of cooking.

If you have the willpower, try to keep the amount of potatoes you eat in reasonable levels, too. They are match even to the mighty sugar in their ability to cause insulin spikes and make you fat.

Sweet drinks are perhaps most insidious of them all, for they are sugar in disguise: everyone knows that guzzling down enormous quantities of Coca Cola is bad for you, but fruit juices are almost as bad. Water should be your first choice of beverage whenever you can muster the willpower to avoid sugary drinks. Water has almost endless list of benefits compared to any other drink: it has no calories, it hydrates the body, and it drives the feeling of hunger away. 8 large glasses are the recommended minimum.

A quick tip to burn a few extra calories with no effort: drink your water cold: body must expend energy to heat up the water, meaning you can spend fair few calories by just drinking water!

4 Do not measure kilos, measure inches

If you look good and healthy and, does your actual weight matter? I have always been a big believer in what appears in a mirror and a great sceptic when it comes to the scales. I pretty much believe that if you look good, you are doing good.

Besides, if you do any heavier exercises (such as weights, power aerobics, gymnastics etc.), you will pack on muscle mass. Muscles weight more than fat. Therefore you can have tiny waistline and still dip the scales at ‘overweight’ levels. In fact, according to BMI (body mass index) rating, many of the really fit people are overweight, but they are not fat or out-of-shape. They simply carry more muscles mass than your average citizen. If you can see your abs clearly, you are not fat no matter what the scales say.

5 Give yourself a day off once a week

Once a week, pig until you burst. Pro athletes can handle a diet that is always super-strict. The lesser mortals like us have to give in to our cravings once a week. Eat pizza, chocolate, ice cream, crisps, hamburgers, and whatever else your heart desires, BUT ONLY ONCE PER WEEK! Following otherwise sensible diet will kickstart your body’s metabolism, and deviating once per week will not allow your body to shift gears into fat storing mode. Yes, you will put on a bit of weight, bit if it happens only once per week the damage is not uncontrollable, and your otherwise cleaner diet and exercise regime will keep you well under control.

Thus spoketh the Dragon, and in his voice echoed with the deafening roar of Truth.

30,000

And I just noticed - D/k hit the 30,000 visitor mark nine visitors ago. I can't identify the user this time more than that he or she comes from somewhere around the West Coast, uses a Mac and apparently comes here regulary as there was no referring page.

For our celebrated 30,000th visitor and to all our readers: thanks for coming, and we wouldn't be here without you.

Picnic

For the past quite a few years we haven't really celebrated vappu, the Finnish May Day fest. England didn't have any festivities, and neither does Canada - but it was important for my parents, especially for my dad that we did the traditional vappu picnic today. It's not that I'm against picnics - quite the contrary - I just probably wouldn't have bothered.

With my mom we prepared a potato salad and packed rye bread, egg slices and pickled Swedish herrings for the traditional herring sandwiches, and topped it off with some strawberries and vanilla yoghurt. We toasted with some champagne before we left, and found a fantastic sunny spot under a big cedar three. Nearby there was some kind of aboriginal band playing and we enjoyed the food, the sun and the scenery, and good conversation in good company - and ok, I might have been a bit tipsy, but that happens when you give a lady some champagne!