Well, the results are in and Harper has somehow secured a majority government. I'm actually surprised that they obtained a majority, mainly due to vote of no-confidence in parliament, but this is how it all played out. In all honesty, I can definitely handle the conservatives winning, but I find it odd that Harper is still allowed to lead the party. At the very least you would think the conservative party would remove Harper as the figurehead based on the previous allegations against him and the vote of no-confidence. But given that Harper's government renovated the Parliament Buildings and replaced ...

Between the ages of 17 and about 21 or so I was actually pretty big into biking. I used to have a Specialized mountain bike, and would hit the trails on the weekends or ride around Chilliwack with my friends. Unfortunately that bike got stolen one day when I accidentally left the garage door open overnight, and I didn't have money to replace it at the time. About five years ago I decided to pick up a bike in Vancouver, and ended up getting a cheap $150 hybrid just to try and get some exercise. I'm not sure if it was because it was pretty much a piece of garbage or the fact that it wasn't really ...

As everyone now knows, Osama Bin Laden was killed tonight in what was apparently a US led mission in Pakistan. I watched the entire media surrounding the event unfold, starting with Twitter, moving to some news agencies such as the New York Times, and finally culminating in President Obama's speech regarding the death of Osama Bin Laden. In truth, I found it hard to watch. While I am happy that all the families who were affected by September 11th finally have closure, I find it hard to celebrate the death of any one individual. Maybe it's because I think most wars are pointless, like I thought ...

I remember taking a summer off from UBC one year and heading back to Chilliwack. At the time gas was sitting at around 39 cents per litre. It's hard to imagine that it's only been around ten years since then and gas is now hovering at around 140 cents a litre in the Vancouver area. To put that into context, the $60 I spend filling up my car would have cost around $16 back then. In fact, now that I'm back in the Vancouver area, it's not lost on me just how expensive it is to own and operate a car. I have a 2006 Mazda 3 Sport that I own outright. My insurance runs me around $135 a month through ...

Back when I was 18, my mom asked me what I wanted as a present for successfully completing high school with honours. My friend Matt at the time had just started playing guitar, so I decided at that moment I too wanted to be a guitar player. A few weeks later we found ourselves down in Tom Lee music in Vancouver, and my mom purchased my first guitar for me, a Fender Stratocaster. Since that time I've probably gone through three or four acoustic guitars, each time upping the ante in terms of cost and quality. That said, most of the guitars I've used over the years have been fairly unremarkable, ...

There's a new kid on the block in terms of Vancouver WordPress conferences, and that kid's name is WordCamp:Developers. Unlike previous incarnations of WordCamp in the Vancouver area, WordCamp:Developers will have less content about the beginner aspects of WordPress (like the difference between .com and .org, which comes up at many conferences) and more content about advanced aspects of WordPress, such as development. As many people know, I've helped organize three WordCamp conferences in the Vancouver area. The first was a small WordCamp Vancouver that was attached to BarCamp (which is no longer ...

I've been itching lately to try cooking some Indian cuisine, and have devoured a few cookbooks on the subject. The cookbook that appeals to me the most includes recipes that entail slow cooking most of the popular Indian dishes, so that's what I've decided to start with. The name of the book (if anyone is interested) is The Indian Slow Cooker: 50 Healthy, Easy, Authentic Recipes. Why Indian? That's a good question. Probably the best answer is that I really have no idea how to make any of the dishes, so it seems like a fun venture for a few weeks. I also recently spent three months in Argentina ...

I moved into my summer home yesterday with John and have slowly started getting settled. Most of my bedding is stuck in the back of my storage locker, but considering that I only have a duvet and some sheets stored I decided to simply buy a new bed set. So yesterday I went out and bought a bed in a bag from the new Walmart out in Chilliwack. Since then I've dropped about $250 on both groceries and a few new kitchen toys, including a slow cooker. I had a slow cooker a long time ago but never used it, mostly because I had no idea what to do in the kitchen at the time. I still have a lot to learn, ...

As many people on Twitter know, after four months of traveling I am finally back at home in BC. I was originally going to fly back home on Thursday, but the combination of a friend of mine having a death in the family back home and the fact that I found a really cheap flight leaving Dublin on Sunday made me decide to head back a few days early. Sunday was a long day: I had an eight hour flight from Dublin to Chicago, a five hour layover, and then another four and a half hour flight to Vancouver. Chicago was bursting at the seems, and people were literally camped out in the hallways waiting for ...

I'm currently sitting in the Edinburgh airport in Scotland sipping on a rather expensive $6 diet coke while waiting for my flight to Dublin. I haven't done a post on the economy in a while, so I figured it was about time. Lots is going on down south, none of it is good. Last weekend the US government came close to a shutdown due to the fact that they hit their congressionally approved debt ceiling. While it's been raised previously, there's growing concern that the US debt is at the point of no return. As a result politicians on both sides are trying to get both sides to agree to cuts. Unfortunately ...

I left South America a few weeks ago, and have since been to New York City and a great deal of Ireland. Ireland was quite the whirlwind adventure. I spent the first night in Limerick at my friend Andy's place, and then the next day we did a road trip up to Galway. The day after we headed down to Cork, and made a quick pitstop to kiss the original Blarney Stone. The next two nights we stayed at little 200 year old cottage in Mitchellstown. All in all a great adventure. I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland Monday morning, and am currently sitting in a hotel. I haven't had time to go take my photos yet, ...

I've been going pretty much non-stop since last Wednesday. It's hard for me to believe that less than a week ago I was sitting in the airport in Buenos Aires getting ready to leave. Since then I've flown for 15 hours, been molested in Houston airport, and spent five days bouncing around New York City with my friend. Leaving Buenos Aires Before leaving Canada I managed to pick up a prescription of Ativan to help with airplane anxiety. I actually have a mild-phobia of hurtling through the atmosphere in a huge pressurized cylinder. I don't let my fear stop me, but I get extremely anxious during high ...

As of yesterday, I am no longer the owner of a SLR camera. I purchased my first SLR back in 2004, so I've been a SLR user for almost 7 years. And while I love the quality of photos you can take with a SLR camera, dragging tons of equipment and lenses around gets a bit tiring. That's even more true when you start picking up some of the nicer, heavier lenses, many of which I owned previously. I sold all my L-series glass about 6 months ago, partially because they weren't being used and also because I needed the cash to finance some of my current traveling adventures. I wasn't originally going to ...

Six months ago I was sitting back in my apartment in Chilliwack trying to figure out where the first destination on my big adventure would take me. I immediately thought of the Caribbean, since it was an area I had been to many times and I was familiar with. Since the goal of my trip was to also work while exploring the world, that meant wherever I ended up would have to have decent access to the internet. That took Cuba off the list, as well as most small towns. I was actually homing in on the Dominican Republic when, out of boredom, I started thumbing through The 4-Hour Workweek, a popular book ...

I'm in the process of checking myself out of my apartment in Buenos Aires, and will be shortly heading to New York City for a few days of feasting and sight-seeing. One of the first items on the agenda though is to head to B&H camera to pick up my first micro four-thirds system camera. I've decided on the Olympus E-PL2 camera, which is one of the newest, highly reviewed micro four-thirds bodies available. John Biehler just did a great write-up on the same camera, so definitely check it out. While John used the 17mm lens, I'll probably be buying the 20mm f/1.7 lens, simply because it's a bit ...

I'll probably do a summary post on Buenos Aires the night when I leave, but this is my last weekly update from Buenos Aires. My little widget says that I'm leaving my apartment in four days, at which point I'll be migrating to a hotel for my final night. I've been trying to get my landlord to commit to a time to do the final walkthrough so I can get my damage deposit, but he hasn't responded to me. I'm not worried, since I do hold the keys and he can't really rent it until he gets them back from me. But it would be nice to have that all in place for peace of mind. I'll send another email in a ...

So, I've lost track of how many days that I've been here. I was originally coming for something like 87 days, so it must be near day 80 or so. As the title of the post says, I'm down to only 8 days left. I spent the weekend down in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. I had a great time, and was almost sad to leave when the time came. Staying in a hostel was a great experience, and I always had people around. Compared to Buenos Aires, where I work mostly solo during the weeks, it was nice to have some company around again, even if for a few days. I'll do a full trip review as ...

I´m currently at the Antarctica Hostel in the city of Ushuaia, Argentina, affectionately called the city at the end of the world. This is officially the southern most city in the entire world, so it´s pretty amazing to be here. I´ll do a proper trip report when I´m back in Buenos Aires, but since I have a few hours to kill before my penguin tour later today, I thought I would do a quick update. The keyboard I´m using in the hostel is prety funky, and many of the keys are out of place compared to a normal keyboard. So, this entry is pretty slow going! But I´m having a really great time here ...

While I technically am leaving for Ushuaia in two days, for all intents and purposes (due to the early nature of my flight), I basically leave tomorrow evening. I'm excited about Ushuaia for lots of reasons. First, the weather is a lot colder down there compared to Buenos Aires. The high on Thursday is 9C, and the low is 6C. That's almost what the weather is like back home in Vancouver as well. While a lot of people like really hot climates, I'm not really one of them. I would rather be too cold than too hot - you can always put another shirt on, but if you're already sweating and not wearing ...

On my original flight from Houston to Buenos Aires I commented on the fact that we hit some turbulence near the equator. It was probably about 2am for me and I was a bit groggy from ativan, so I didn't really take too much notice. But I thought at the time that it may be related to crossing from the nothern hemisphere down to the southern hemisphere. Sure enough, there's a region of unstable air around the equator called the Intertropical Convergence Zone which often causes turbulence for flights crossing between the two hemispheres. Sometimes the turbulence isn't so bad, but I've read reports ...