Recently in Personal Category

Yesterday when I was getting back home from the Harbourfront (after running into Pele), I stumble upon the second annual Race for Dignity Challenge at the Yonge-Dundas Square. Loud drums were a big draw for many onlookers and I am sure it help a lot for those who participated in this event trying to raise money for people in Malawi so they have greater access to Dignitas's medical services, including life-saving medications and HIV prevention knowledge. The Race for Dignity Challenge spinathon on stationary spin bikes kicked-off at Yonge-Dundas Square at noon for 10 hours, and featured 10 hours of live onstage entertainment including musicians, dancers, and spoken word artists. Here is more about the event - www.dignitasinternational.org

As always during the summer months, my favorite place to hand out is the Boardwalk in the Beach. This year, I have noticed some new dog signs all over the place. I am clueless what they suppose to represent, the red signs are on lamp posts along the boardwalk showing a dog with a collar. I assume it means you cannot have your dog off leash there. The are off leash show the same dog on yellow which I guess it means OK to have your have your dog off leash there. Except these signs are far from clear: if the city is using red for NO, why they are using yellow for YES? There is a visible collar on the dog but neither show a leash. Anyways I thought it kind of confusing, as dog owner myself I would just ignore them because they do not explain anything to me other than that they little cute pointless signs all over the place.

I am made of water, I love water and I drink a lot of water each and every day. Naturally I carry water with me all the time wherever I am. For years I have been relying on plastic bottles of water, which as know now are causing a huge environmental problems all the planet. The cannot be cleaned and re-filled at home since any attempt at pouring hot water to sterilized makes them often loose their shape and apparently make them leach harmful chemicals at the same time. I think that people should start drinking water out of containers that are made of steel of a different type of material that is non-toxic to us and the environment. Not to mention that paying for water is like paying for air! It is a waster of money.

Since I have a reverse osmosis system at home to filter all my tap water (I got it originally for my marine fish tank and started to use the filtered water for drinking at the same time) and I picked up my own 500ml stainless steel re-usable water bottle today. It is easy to clean, re-fill and comes with a clip as well so I can carry it around easily no matter is I am walking or biking with it. Did I mentioned it look funky too? First I switched to fabric re-usable shopping bags and now: no matter waste, no more plastic water bottles for me. Hope more people will follow the idea...

I had a chance to see the movie called Wall-E this week, it was one of the better animations I have seen a long time. Wall-E the garbage robot ("Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class") is definitely very much likable and cute as well. The theater was full of small children who hardly could truly understand the movie and its messages judging my many questions they asked their during the screening, but I think teen to more mature audience would benefit greatly from seeing it. Wall-E which is a small trash-collecting robot who is the last of its kind, exist in an infinite quest to clean up an abandoned, trash-riddled Earth all by himself.

There is environmental warning message to us all, that we are all just focus on consumption and do not care about the planet we live on, therefore we will have to abandon it like they did it in the movie. Earth shown there was a wasteland of garbage tormented by sand storms. Humans left the planet as we learn later on in the plot to live in vegetable state like, hovering on the beds around a spaceship. The president of the nation is actually called CEO and the company behind it is like one of these big box retails (Costco for example) The scary environmental situation is not the main storyline of the movie, which is actually love between Wall-E and Eve who is another robot sent by humans to see if planet earth is clean enough now for recolonization. Pixar did awesome job and I would hardly recommend it for anyone 12 and old to see the movie.  

We have had a really long and cold Winter, lousy cool and rainy Spring so far. But it is about to chance from now on!  Here is the weather forecast, tomorrow will feel like 39C finally. It is my kind of weather...

I came across a short video documentary from Current about UK restrictions on photography in public places on BoingBoing today. As someone who carries a camera almost all the time, everywhere because I truly enjoy photography, I am terribly disappointed by the new trend where people being harassed for either taking photos or video taping in public spaces. UK like Canada or US suppose to be a free society where we should be allowed to do things within what is allowed by laws. This is not first time in recent months I have heard about incidences like the one presented in this short video. I have had a my own problems with security on a subway platform last year where I was questioned why I am taking photos, while there is no law actually preventing me from doing so in Canada. I understand the current worldwide climate and the politics of fear which has been successfully sold to us over the recent years. But while we all should be a little more cautious, there need to be common sense as well.  

Another great weekend doing Doors Open Toronto came a close, this year some friend and I went to see The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre, The Flatiron Building (Toronto's building is the oldest Flatiron in the world), TD Centre (top floor where the TD Bank Boardroom meets) and Canada Life building. 2008 Doors Open Toronto gives visitors an opportunity to explore over 140 buildings of architectural, historic, cultural and/or social significance; admission is free. Many of the city’s finest churches, chapels, temples, synagogues and mosques were among the featured buildings this year, as well as structures never before open to the public. Here are just a few photographs I took during the tour of the city, for more - check out the photo set on Flickr!

In just about a week and half I am going to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto for Oundjian And Dindo. Cellist Enrico Dindo – who dazzled TSO audiences in 2006 with the two Shostakovich Concertos – returns with another masterpiece of twentieth century Russian music: Sergey Prokofiev's thrilling Sinfonia concertante. Peter Oundjian has paired it with American composer John Corigliano's Symphony No. 2. This Pulitzer Prize-winning work for string orchestra was hailed by the Chicago Tribune for its "coruscating power, eerie beauty and sheer inventive fantasy." The program includes Bernstein: Candide Overture; Prokofiev: Sinfonia concertante for Cello and Orchestra; John Corigliano: Symphony No. 2 for string orchestra. We have got good seats for June 4th performance and I am looking forward to it now, especially since I have not been to the Roy Thomson Hall before. 

 

I was reading an article about a Wisconsin man who has extraordinary memory known as hyperthymestic syndrome. It allows him to recall pretty much any day of his life in astonishing detail. Most of us have a good memory but with time events, people, specific details fade away leaving us with little or no memory, but apparently there are three people in the world (at least those who were identified by medical tests) who are able to recall any day of their life. Here is an example from the article: 

Lately I have been thinking how much I miss Buenos Aires. In a way I have been comparing it to Barcelona, trying to  see which of the two cities is a winner. The fact of the matter is that you cannot do that, since each one of them is so very much different its nature. Sure there some similarities between them, but there are both as unique as they could be. From my own perspective I guess miss Buenos Aires a little more, it is a bigger city therefore it has a lot more to offer. Depending in which barrio you are, you are almost visiting another town, yet they are all interconnected and very much co-dependent on each other. And this formula is the essence of it and I miss that specific essence. I have been to many cities all over this planet and Buenos Aires feels right to me. 

Biographies are brilliant learning tool, I have always been a huge fun of them. Recently I have re-discovered The Biography Channel which I have always had an access to on my cable TV, but did not pay as much attention as I should have. It is amazing how much you can learn about life from other people mistakes, misconceptions, ideas, good and bad choices and often plain stupidity. And we all know that there is nothing better than learning from mistakes of others. This is why biographies and autobiographies serve me as role models now, illustrating how prominent or successful people experience triumphs, failures, and hardships throughout their lives. They are often full of fascinating details you would not normally know about or simply never heard of from media or other books. Each of the one hour shows enables you to get a good understanding of someone's choices they made in life and what impact and outcome it had on their journey through life, their career and their works and how you can apply this knowledge to your own situation, your own life. Biographies are also an amazing resources about the relationship between someone's life and times they lived in, so you get clear picture of history as well. Learn from others by reading or watching biographies, you will be amazed how many of them will have direct relationship to you in one way or the other. Yesterday was a great piece about Andy Warhol and tomorrow at 10pm there is a biography of Salvador Dali! 

I think I reached a new low at the moment... 

One of the things I love about Europe are many great Papelería shops or stationary shops where you can find anything and everything and many really cool things. This time I found really neat mouse pads for my iMac. I love fruits so I bought one of them with a citrus on it for only €5.00! It is actually made by Italian company called Tucano They also had  a several other designs available. The quality is excellent, it fun to use and it does not get dirty due to the materials they use to make them. 

As much as I love flying, killing close to 8 hours on the last leg of the trip back home can be a bit challenging at times. Especially when you are chasing the never ending sunset over the Atlantic so you cannot take a nap while you at it. The only thing left at that point, it is the remote control for your in-flight on demand entertainment service and trying to find something to watch that you have not seen already. As it turns out, there was hope for me before I went crazy, a movie called Death at a Funeral. It is a British comedy (and I have been a huge fan of those) and for close to two hours I was dying from laughing. One most hysterical comedies I have seen in many years, brilliant script and awesome performance by all of the cast at the same time. It slowly builds momentum to the point you cannot stop laughing your head off for the last part of the movie. And as I watched it on the plane with my headset on, I felt really bad later on for my fellow passengers around me as I must been a little loud most of the time, but you really cannot keep a straight face watching it. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who has not seen it so far. I don't buy DVD normally but this is a keeper for years to come, so when I find it somewhere online or at the store, I am getting it!    

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