War Rants

Things that are pissing me off:

1) Dorks that take pictures of every slide being shown during a talk. Hey, how about paying attention instead of blocking my view there r tard? Bad enough that they knock you out of the way so they can get 100Mega pixel shots of posters to recreate all the fun at home, but now I have to put up with flashes and fake camera noises whilst I'm trying to follow a presentation? And god forbid the speaker should use a lot of animations. The poor bastards can't keep up.

2) The current US-Canada exchange rate. OK George, this week dollar thing has gone too far. Now I'm not saying we need the glory days of when you could get $1.40 for your greenback dollar in the Great White North, but the usual $1.20 rate would be fine. They were offering 3 cents to the dollar at Niagra falls. Why even bother? 3 cents? Canadians better be buying a lot of our crap for this outrage.

Thing That Cracked Me Up:

Some poor bugger asked a question in million-syllable-per-second psuedo English following a presentation. Despite the rapid rate, the dude took a good minute and half to spit out his query, and was answered only with a hostile-sounding "WHAT?". It was the same tone you might expect if your father found out you were preggers in high-school, or that you had wrecked his car. AnOs and I struggled not to laugh too loud, and would repeat the shout at others all week long. Later on, a more polite speaker would simply point out that he couldn't understand the poor fellow. Anyway, if you're keeping score at home, the correct meeting manner is to reply "I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?" and act like his mike isn't working too well. If this fails, simply say "Yes that's a very interesting question, we're working on that right now, so maybe at the next meeting we can answer that."

The FallsTwas a pretty good thing following the wild Tuesday night, that Odin's Day was only a half day at the conference. The second half was a trip to Niagra Falls. I know what you're thinking, yea it's touristy, but when else you gonna go? Also the trip included a free ride on the Maid of the Mist, which I was looking forward to. As it turned out, the weather was perfect, as you can see. We headed for the boats as soon as we got there, as 1000 people from the conference had signed up. We wanted to beat the rush. Another added bonus, free parkas!

Plastic People, Get to the Boat

Like Viagra with a N, Niagra Has Lots of Flow

Heck we even got a rainbow, and you know what that means. I just learnt that at the Pride festival here this week in TO. Wonder if the Irish knew about that. Oh and, I'm not the diety they are speaking of, I enjoy rainbows for the natural scientific phenonmenon they are. Not that there's anything wrong with the alternate, but I'll stick with the original rainbow connection.

God Buggering Around Again

We Kinda Use 'Sorry' As Our Hello

The scientific program of the conference began on Monday. AnOs and I found the rest of the NRD-herd, The Hawk and Kampay, and also added AngiO, The Hawk's counterpart from AFIOH. Although we're a true team, we sometimes split up to make sure we had both concurrent sessions covered and to cover our differing interests. The conference schedule is pretty brutal, with only short breaks in between long sessions that run from 8:30 AM to 6PM. The endurance race begins...

Monday night was the first of two poster sessions and the one during which AnOs and The Hawk presented. AnOs managed to ask Nancy Cox whom she was whilst holding a beer in one hand. I figure this cost him the poster contest although he claims he recovered. Nonetheless, his poster was pretty well received and we had all the questions that people asked covered. Go Team!

After the poster session we went to a local pub to have a few pints to round out the evening. It was there that The Hawk saw a poster for Sonic Playground. One look at the lead singer and the Hawk decided we'd be coming back. So after the poster session on Tuesday, we headed back to the same tavern. We also added PosterGirl, whom we'd met at the previous poster session, to our team.

Now I'm the first to say that if you're going out to see a cover band, there's something wrong with the music scene or your priorities, but I have to admit Sonic Playground were enormous fun. Their songs ranged from 70's funk to more modern sounds (negative: they didn't know the Pixies!) but all done well yet not in total copy-cat fashion. Their 10-minute medley of Superstitious/Play That Funky Music/Turn This Mother Out really got the crowd in a good mood. After their warm-up set, they invited audience members to participate:

Oooo-wee-ooo-I-sing-just-like-Rivers-Cuomo

We were at this pub for quite some time and the Strongbow Cider was flowing. In fact, you can monitor the changes in the NRD-Herd with respect to time in this following series, which goes from early evening, to later on:

Could Possibly Still Discuss Science

Able to Discuss Possibility of More Drinks

Unable to discuss much

You can see in the above photo how we're starting to interact a little with our bar neighbors, as AnOs almost knocked the guy on the right down for his two-second two-step with AngiO. (That went over way better than The Hawk's stealth stalking picture taking.) Well at some point, our neighbors started to interact with us, as depicted below:

AnOs declines to give the man a hand

In this photo, we see AnOs in flight after being prodded with the strange device this member of a rugby team (yea, go figure!) used to drink from. Now I've seen AnOs running around the bases at softball and during flag football, but you've never seen the man move until he turns around and realises he's just been poked with a penis-shaped cup.

The photo at the top? Yea, we managed to go to a ball-game after the second poster session. We had good seats to heckle the Dodger bull pen from, but they still won 11-1 or something like that. I mean it's baseball, you can't really expect me to pay too much attention.

Somehow the rest of the AFRIMS crowd that joined us managed to escape having their photos snapped, at least by me. Wallace was amongst them and his grin was as large as ever, having just been taken to his first ever Hooter's restaurant. His grin said it all: Democracy! Whisky! Sexy! So much for Sea World...

The title quote comes from local native PosterGirl and a discussion on just how smashingly nice Canadians really are.

Let's Make a Deal

Too bad Professional Eater is no longer checking in, she would have loved the reception spread: which included putin sauce and all the beer you could drink. AnOs and I were joined by Meg from Chapel Hill and Wallace, who works for USAMRIID in Kenya. Wallace has one of those infectious-sized smiles that all Kenyan’s seem to carry. He had just been to San Diego for the GEIS flu meeting we hosted at NHRC. His biggest thrill: Sea World. He spent seven hours there and thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was so refreshing to hear someone describe it without a hint of sarcasm, there was real joy in his eyes. His dream is to bring his kids back to the place and I hope it works out for him. Meg is doing some really cool culture based assays with influenza at Chapel Hill. I’m hoping we can work out some sort of collaboration and get some infectivity data on our strains. Wallace and I also worked out a new proposal for GEIS over a few beers. Since The Hawk hadn’t appeared yet, he couldn’t put a stop to our handshake to seal the deal. Networking Score:2 and the conference (Here) has barely begun!

Yes, still no sign of the Hawk and since it's really not like him to miss free food and beer, we're starting to get worried.

Camera one, closes in, the con-fer-ence begins…

Today the fun started. I managed to run into AnOs near the convention center. We went and had lunch at the Queen Mother Café. Now your Mars receives the vast majority of his pleasure aurally (read it again friend) and has never been one to near orgasm over culinary delights, but the food at the Queen Mother’s was exceptional. I had the Khao Soy Gai and let me tell you, I will never have it again, because you don’t’ mess with perfection. YUM! Served with a pint of Strongbow Cider, your Mars was indeed pleased. AnOs had The Beafeeter and was quite satisfied as well. We got served well again at the reception to the conference later: yummy potatoes with real putin gravy along with fresh served roast beef and turkey. Also, with free beer flowing we said 'ok, just one more' at least three times. Your Mars managed to snag the last Keith's Pale Ale before it was boxed away. Thank god for all that Beerfest training.

The opening speeches at the conference were what you would expect: we need to work together as pandemic influenza is a global problem, we need better communication, we need better coordination etc. etc. I did like the Canadian Public Health guy, he manged to quote Pasteur, Benjamin Disreali and George Bernard Shaw in his introduction. The fact that he spoke French isn't so impressive since he's Canadian :)

Oh, turns out that little ‘band’ thing that was going on at King’s St. West. That was the Much Music Awards. AnOs and I watched little Avril Lavign at an Irish pub dancing around mere meters away from where we had walked earlier. Canadians are so cute, but someone needs to tell them that no matter what, playing the fiddle just does not grant rock god status or merit the moves.

Tomorrow the real fun begins!

"One Great City!"—The Weakerthans

I did my best to go record shopping today. All the vinyl that used to be has moved on… Now Sam’s was never my favorite record store, but an ‘end of an era’ sale means big discounts, and who am I to pass that up? I scored the 90’s box set “Whatever” (a 7 CD set by Rhino is a steal at $35 canadian) and a few other obscure albums (Josh White’s “Empty Bed Blues” and Oscar Brands double disc set of all 4 military services albums). “Whatever” meets the high standard of everything Rhino despite the side step to include a lot of ‘non-rock’ radio hits on the set (i.e. Hip Hop). In my opinion, some of it works (who could deny Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”) and some doesn’t (Me Shells "Was that your Girlfriend?"). Still, there’s lots of songs on here I wouldn’t bother with any other way ("Diz-Knee-Land", "Sex & Candy"). Guilty pleasures are still pleasures. Musing: Whatever happened to Monie Love? Where she at?

Trips to other nearby CD based stores were met yielded only a Twilight Singers single. Towards the end I headed down Queen St West were I found a nice Soul/Funk/Techno shop that had scored a number of picture sleeve 7”s. 10 for $15 Canadian. Your Mars was in Valhalla dear reader. Heck I even took home a tiffany 7” picture sleeve to round out the second set.

Some sort of video shoot was going on near the TV station:
(pics to come)

I heard their sound check and decided to move on :/

I had planned to check out the tribute to a local cowboy named Ned in the same area later this same evening. There was some sort of benefit for him, as he had passed nearly a decade ago. Since it sounded kind of country (odd for Toronto imho) I wanted to check it out. Sadly, when I got there around showtime (10:30) I learned I’d already missed the greater part. So I went out in search of some beer and a real wireless connection. Seems my hotel wireless doesn’t allow me to connect to blogspot.com or many other useful sites. I found Sotheby’s Deli, which promised both boons, but only brought the beer (Alexander Keiths India Pale ale Yum!). After the third one, the wireless just seemed like it would have only been icing anyway. The real icing turned out to be the cute & kind waitress who brought some tonic water when I managed to mustard myself.

Tomorrow the rest of the NRDL nerds show up and the conference starts. I’m thinking we have to sneak in a Blue Jays Game at some point…

“I went back to Ontario and my city was gone—“
Paraphrased from the Pretenders

Today was a sad day for your noble god dear reader. I got in rather late, but I still managed to snag a swift stroll along Yonge St. and look for some old familiar sites. Sam the Record Man was closed, but I can smell a going out of business sale a mile away. The easy indicator was the ‘20% off all marked prices” sign I could see through the shuttered shop doors. This combined with Toronto Trevor’s tale of the final days of the folky record store that used to exist upstairs along Yonge (It breaks my heart to think of boxes of records hauled outside like trash and labeled ‘free’) weighs heavy on me. Alas, times change and all things must pass, but to go out with such loss of dignity…the very store that provided one of the Greatest Record Finds ever, (it would seem m pals dav's immortal site is now gone as well :( In an act so gracious that it could only come from Canada, the Mr. Gin Gin album was GIVEN to my pal Dav after he inquired about the price of the unmarked album. Yes all those stories you’ve heard of ‘nice’ Canadians aren’t fairy tales, they’re true whispers of a better way. Mr. Gin Gin has livened up many an alcohol injected evening, at least for Dav and I. Wives and girlfriends don’t seem to bear the same tolerance we have for multiple repeat playings. (Mainly because we only really care about, and play, the leadoff track.) I mean the whole thing is in French, except for the accent-heavy “She’s too fat, much too fat, much too fat for me” ramblings toward the end of the opener. Ah…such high entertainment gifted to us by the Canadian people. The last time we listened to it, I was driven to such an altered state as to bite one of Dav’s limbo LPs in half. That’s the power of Mr. Gin Gin. and lots and lots of beer.

If you’re keeping score at home, all the strip clubs are still intact. Some things never go out of style :/

“I Wanna Go! I Wanna Go! To Ontario” – The Posies 'Ontario' from “Amazing Disgrace”

I’ve discovered the hardest part of blogging a blog called ‘wanderinwargod’ is that its really hard to blog outside of the wandering experience. There’s lots of wandering that’s been done since the Vienna/Croatia/Ljubljana trip (jaunts to Ohio, Whale Watching in Guerro Negro but outside of an internet connection, it’s just hard to keep up. We’ll see how I do here in the Great White North and I’ll try to catch up after that.

In any case, I’m excited to be back in a real foreign city, and by that I mean one with a non-'merican (Canadian is far enough away!) speaking population, cosmopolitan culture mix and public transportation. As the first foreign soil I ever set foot on, Toronto holds a special place in my mind and heart. It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve been here, so I’m really curious to see what’s changed. Sadly, I won't have any gorgeous grad students to guide me around this time, so I’ll have to rely on my own wits. hrm…