Category: Vancouver

Spe­cif­ic to Vancouver

Flu Survival Kit

The Moose Fever that befell what seems to be half the North­ern­Voice attendees (although to be fair, lots of oth­er people I know in Van­couver are down with the flu as well, it seems par­tic­u­larly vir­u­lent this year) is slowly loosen­ing its grip. It’s more than a little dis­con­cert­ing when you go through the list of symp­toms in the BC Health Guide and real­ize you have all of them, plus a few more (what’s with the tin­nit­us?). So now, the res­ol­u­tions for next time, aka the flu sur­viv­al kit:

  • get the flu shot; even if it does­n’t always work, it prob­ably does often enough to be worthwhile
  • make sure the medi­cine cup­board always has the basics: ibupro­fen, phlegm loosen­er (pure Guaifen­es­in works best for me), decon­gest­ant (pseudoep­hedrine for when the cough no longer brings up phlegm but the ears are still plugged and I have a sinus head­ache), cough sup­press­ant, acetaminophen/paracetamol (in case the fever responds bet­ter to that than with ibuprofen)
  • herb­al teas help a lot: ginger and lem­on, cam­o­mile, mint
  • get lots of tissues
  • keep a few days worth of easy-to-pre­pare food around. Cook­ing from scratch is nice, but not when you can­’t stand up for very long.

Now all I have to do is remem­ber to read this list before the next flu sea­son starts!

Northern Voice Weekend

The week­end is going to be full of North­ern Voice, I can just tell. The must-dos for me are the din­ner on the Thursday even­ing (sorry, sold out), the uncon­fer­ence day on the Fri­day (I’ll be going to the ses­sion on iden­tity and pri­vacy of course, and whatever else takes my fancy once I’m there), and mod­er­at­ing a couple of ses­sions on the Sat­urday after­noon (Nancy White and Alex Water­house-Hay­ward and Dar­ren Bare­foot). Some of the ses­sions I’d like to go to clash with oth­ers as is always the case at any half-way decent con­fer­ence, but unlike lots of con­fer­ences this one should be extens­ively pod­cast. Not quite the same as being in a ses­sion, but a good second.

I hope to have more blog­ging energy after this con­fer­ence. Recently I’ve felt like I’ve spent more time on meta-issues than actu­ally blog­ging; I’ve been trawl­ing for break-ins on my site and sift­ing through access logs most days rather than craft­ing prose. With all the pass­words on my site now changed, and the latest WP installed, all I need to get back to writ­ing is a bit of inspir­a­tion. In past years North­ern Voice has sup­plied that; hope­fully this year it will again. 

Northern Voice Almost Sold Out

As the title says, the North­ern­Voice con­fer­ence, to be held Feb­ru­ary 23 and 24 at the Forestry Sci­ences Centre at UBC, is almost sold out. As of Fri­day, there were only 50 spots left, and I’m sure at least some of those are now gone. So if you want to be there, now’s the time to fire up your browser and point it at the regis­tra­tion page.

Moose Deadlines

The regis­tra­tion is open for North­ern Voice 2007 and the speak­er sub­mis­sions will be clos­ing on Fri­day Decem­ber 1st. We exten­ded the dead­line to let people recov­er from the tor­ren­tial down­pours, record snow­falls, high winds, and assor­ted oth­er draw­backs of Novem­ber in the Pacific North-West. 

And if you want a t‑shirt, you can vote on which col­our it should be as well! Just head over to the sur­vey and let us know.

Tea Water

The advis­ory to boil water remains in Van­couver even though there was a lot less rain at the week­end than was fore­cast. The scenes of pan­ic repor­ted on in the paper on Sat­urday are, it is to be hoped, a thing of the past as people real­ise that boil­ing water isn’t all that hard, and then fil­ter­ing it after­wards does get rid of most of the silt. I was amused at the note sent home from my son’s school which poin­ted out “detailed inform­a­tion on how to boil water has been pub­lished in all major news­pa­pers and is avail­able on line” — do they not teach you how to boil water in school these days? If any­one needs the info, here’s the Wiki­How page — just remem­ber you have to boil it for at least a minute to kill any bac­teria. Mind you, read­ing the cur­rent advis­ory makes it clear that there isn’t actu­ally any proven prob­lem with the water here oth­er than the look and taste of it, the author­it­ies are just being care­ful (and no doubt mind­ful of the Walker­ton dis­aster, although they dis­pute any connection).

The biggest con­sequence for most of Van­couver was that vari­ous cof­fee joints were shut (those that could­n’t guar­an­tee boil­ing the water for long enough), as was our loc­al tea shop. I found the lat­ter par­tic­u­larly iron­ic giv­en the likely role that tea, and the neces­sity of boil­ing water for it, played in cut­ting down infant mor­tal­ity in the 1700s in Bri­tain — a sum­mary is in this art­icle: Did tea and beer make Bri­tain great?. Oh well, maybe it was shut because the con­tam­in­ants in the water would affect the taste of the tea; I haven’t yet had a chance to ask.