Only in Canada

Hurricanes, as you should know, are powerful storms. They receive names. What you might not know is that when a hurricane is particularly destructive, the government of the affected nation will request for it to be retired, and that name will never again be used for a hurricane.

In 2003, Hurricane Juan struck Halifax square on as a Category 2 storm, bringing wind gusts to over 200 km/h, losses over $200 million, and 8 deaths. As it was the most destructive hurricane to affect Canada (and still is), Environment Canada, for the first time ever, requested that the name be retired.

Environment Canada's made the request for three reasons: "the lost and damaged lives, the impact to economy, and the widespread destruction of trees through out two provinces."

Really? Trees being uprooted was a factor in the decision? Pretty much our whole country is trees!

Only in Canada.

A mind diseased

Lately I've been giving some thought as to my trains of thought. I wanted to see if I could notice any distinct patterns. I couldn't. My mind can go anywhere, apparently. I can be doing math, and happen to see an infinity, and that will set off a chain of randomness.

Infinity > Infiniti > car > hybrid > electricity > the light in the next room that I should probably turn off > lights! > Light of the World > music > singing > et cetera et cetera...

By this time, I have taken so many tangents that I am a figurative light year away from math.

Oh, tangents. Tangent lines...math. There. I'm back.

Seriously, if I could summarize my thinking with one adjective, it would probably be this:
SCATTERBRAIN

Hmm...brains...psychology...oh shoot I have a quiz on Tuesday...

Trickling Past

The sand within the hourglass trickles, grain
By grain, and Time slips softly, wearily by,
And yet I hear majestic Wisdom cry
Out: tempus fugit! Time and time again
She's proven right that oft uttered refrain.
Time creeps silently on as, slowly, I
Slip into the past. He doth not wait - that sly
Devil moves, impossible to regain.

But that I would be able to resist
That power which draws me into futile thought!
'Tis not the past that I can alter, nay,
But the present! Allow me to desist
That sinister practice, which can help me naught,
And turn my mind toward the coming day.

Bridging the gap

A while back...sorta when school started, but slightly after that maybe, I started to feel something. I started to feel a gap between me and my best friends. I put it off to the side, thinking that I was probably imagining it. I was being a paranoid freak, and it would pass.

It didn't. It bugged me on and off for about two, two and a half weeks before I finally mentioned it yesterday evening to one of these best friends. He told me, very logically, that if there indeed had been a gap, I would not have bothered to finally mention that I felt one, and thus reassured me that it really was my imagination.

But what if I hadn't talked it out? Would the imaginary gap have grown into a real one? It's a distinct possibility.

Perhaps I ought to keep this in mind in the future. A quick word about it is always enough to bridge the beginnings of a gap. Maybe a longer talk is needed for a realizing gap, but even that is no inconvenience compared to the potential good times lost during an ice age in the friendship.

Food for thought.

Plan to Protect

So it's the start of a new school year, and since church programs revolve around the school year, it was the start of AWANA and Sunday School too. To make sure we all complied with our legal obligations, they held a "Plan to Protect" seminar for us. Basically an hour's worth of talk could have been condensed into 3 words.

Use.

Common.

Sense.

Not that the seminar was boring. It was actually far from that. We had a very important discussion of how exactly to make sure everyone is protected when taking children to the washroom. There was some, quite literally, potty humour.

A slide of particular note in the presentation said: "This is NOT a policy. It is a plan to ESTABLISH a policy." Sounds like someone in government wrote that.

Apprehension gives way to a weary tediousness

School started on Tuesday. The weekend was a mad final dash for summer fun, coupled with an increasing sense of dread for the upcoming school year. That...very quickly gave way to the routine, boring, slightly tiring, and tedious moil and toil of the weekday days. Really I don't know what all that dread was about. Once it got started, things got rolling again...there was nothing to be afraid of. It's all been done before; it really wasn't anything new.

Reason 1 for a short post.

On a side note...given that I do not have a personal private computer at my fingertips until at least late in the month (I'm currently borrowing my mom's laptop)...September will probably be a slow blogging month. Don't hold your breath for new posts.

Reason 2 for a short post.

EDIT: My computer arrived very suddenly and a couple weeks ahead of schedule. I now do not have to borrow my mother's.

Home. Sweet, sweet home.

After a good six and a half weeks away, I'm finally back in Vancouver. As I stepped out of the arrivals hall and into the fresh, open expanse that is the city of Vancouver, I was greeted with the Canadian Pacific high summer. Immediately, I put on my jacket.

It was refreshing as hell to be able to step outside a building and not immediately be hit by a wave of humidity. Honestly, however, it was cold.

Well, now that everything's been put away in their respective places, and everybody in Hong Kong knows I'm safely home, it's time to tackle the jet lag. Coming back is always so difficult to adjust to. In Hong Kong, there's so much to do that you don't have time to be jet lagged. Here, it's so different. Here's to being at least being able to stay awake during service on Sunday. Here, as an aside, I would like to say how nice it was to see everybody again.

There were at least a couple things that I've thought through over these past month and a half. Now we'll see how I put these newfound understandings to good use.