It started as an innocent trip to the grocery shop and it ended as a lucious meal. The magic of trout cooked in aluminum with lemon, ginger, garlic and parsley unleashed itself on my pallet. It was enough to make the evening pleasant, the siple creature that I am. Since last night things have gone downhill. The cold I was almost avoiding has taken over me and my nose is sore from its intimate affair with tissue. Still hopes are up that I will be able to run on Sunday. For now bedtime

Live - Shop - Work. This is the advertising gimmick offered by Crossroads, a housing, office, and shopping development at the Northwestern corner of Cambie and Boradway in Vancouver. The location is indeed great and the suites are bound to have decent north shore views, at least until some one else decides to build a highrise just next to them. What is, however, pathetic is the accurate in terms of description, but vile in terms of its implications for modern humans, motto chose by the advertisers. I mean, this is a building placed on a major crossroads location. Instead of emphasizing the great location, the food and etertainment aspects of life at "Crossroads," instead of highlighting the aspect of meeting people, interacting and creating meaningful relations in a nicely urban setting, in a city, which is well designed in terms of the combinations it offers for life work and play in tolerably humane conditions, the advertisers chose: Live - Shop - Work. It is as if human life is all about shopping and working. As if the first thing you should be doing after the end of work is shopping at Lululemon and Wholefoods and then going home. No interraction with people, why do that? No enjoyment of a great city and its opportunities. No, you have to live so that you work so that you shop and keep the building boom alive.

Eating like renaissance bog wigs, consuming like Medici lors, driving a market like fifteenth century elites. This is the status of our existence. It is an odd state to be in but we have to think about it occasionally. Not to self-flagellate, but rather to take stock of the directions in which the human experiment has taken us. Went out last night with a coleague and N. Visited this Vancouver Indian fusion restaurant, a description which in itself is misleading, as there was nothing specifically Indian in the food other than the Pakoras. Still the story lies in the nature of the experience. It lies in the economy of food of which we became but a part of last night. A beautiful space was arranged for the clientele, nice combination of falling faded blue plaster, exposed brick, wood beams, and modern clear cut shaped defining the bar.
All this beautifully arranged and constructed by some interior designer who probably makes money doing restaurants, setting trends and following trends at the same time. Then of course there is almost no reason to talk of the supply line that goes in kleeping a restaurant going, the ordering of food and drinks, the trucks moving around cities and the planes around the world, to strategically position more or less scarce goods on spots convenient for pick up by local consumers. So let us leave the banality of logistics aside, this careful dance of movement and timing on a global scale and let us move to the food.

What are we to make of the cook who spends his time developing new tastes? What are we to make of the R&D that goes behind my culinary experience? What of the investement of time and money in generating the new, the exciting, the pretty and elegant perishable pile of food that I will consume in a manner of minutes? What will the philosopher say of our hedonistic devotion to the new, the sensorily promiscious? What is beauty? What lies behind our pursuit of the exciting in food and beverage? And above all, how amazing that this experience is shared by a large percentage of our society, and yet it remains a mystery for the billions of the people outside our world. No, this is not a guilt tripping exposé. This is just about questions. N noted that we are all Medici's now, how true and untrue.

Back in pain, neck still stiff, and a lot of writing. Still, mostly done. I have earned the right to a film. Sunny day in Vancouver for a change, just to make the backpain more tolerable. News of sailing trip plans moving forward and items ticked off the stress board. Semester coming to a close and the time of departures approaching. Looking forward to it with some degree of trepidation. For now a bit of Walkabouts for the time of anticipation before the film.

Stiff. I am not talking of a drink. I am talkingof my neck. It feels stiff like a led pipe and it is not pleasant. Little hints of a head acke are lingering in the general vicinity and the hypochondriac is already thinking of ways in which the knots on my neck can actually be malignant growths intent upon destroying my joyous existence. At home working. It is going well. How to compress 100 years of history in one lecture and not simply talk about facts. The semester is coming to a close and it feels odd to have almost completed a whole period of teaching at my new school. It feels good, but of course there is always stress and this is I guess the main contributor to the neck stiffness. Anyhow, back to work. The greyness has to be used.

Grainy weather. If Hollywood, or rather imperfect visual media, created griny television images, then the Vancouver microclimate has generated the amazing phenomenon of "grainy weather." A situation which leads to impaired visibility and foggy vision as a result of grey, low light conditions generated by low altitude cloud cover, combined with a misty fog, that blend together to create a translucent soup of a day. This is where we are today. We are also faced by a white screen slowly filled with letters on the topic of Byzantine weddings. Once again on the popularizing front satisfying the demands of old friends for non-conspiratorial approaches to history. The rest of the day to be dedicated to student papers. Little to report on this front.

Sometimes epiphany comes late. This was one of the times. I had heard a lot about the film, but somehow never looked into renting it. Never saw it. September 11 happened and then all the GWT tragedy and only this year, from the misty rainforest of YVR did I finally watch Wag the Dog. And it was better than expected, funny and more real that Kassandra's worse nightmares. Only difference?
The GOP equivalent experienced at the present moment is in no way that funny. Other than that, a horribly boring day spent learning basic first aid. Some genious at the university's administrative quarters has decided that after spending 7 hours bored out of my mind with 11 other equally bored people I would be more qualified to lead a field-school. Anyways, all is quite in my kingdom at this stage. Boredome replaced with entertainment and good beer. I just had the first truly worth-while Canadian beer: Amnesiac from a brewery in Victoria. Hops to die for and yet a bitterness that is pleasant and not overpowering.