Bizarre Festivals

Found on Stephen Savage's website, www.thesavagefiles.com (see below), here is a link to a listing of bizarre festivals happening around the world in January: ChilliSauce.co.uk >> bizarre festivals >> january >> home

The Ivrea Carnival Orange Fight in Italy looks wicked, and for photos from Brisbane's annual Australia Day Cockroach Race, visit Stephen's Savage Files website.

The Savage Files

Check out this link folks!

The Savage Files

Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) on IMDB

BUS 272

Last night was BUS 272, and during our tutorial we were debating the effectiveness of motivational methods shown in the video clip of "Glengarry Glen Ross". I was on the debating team which voted the methods ineffective, and it was fairly obvious that probably nearly all of these people have never worked in sales... or at least in a high-pressure job like sales. Or felt desperation and panic. What could you say about adversity's affect on human nature if you've never been in a situation where all avenues closed off and suddenly none of your choices were good? crime suddenly becomes an option... (and those naive classroom theories just go straight out the window)

The longer I attend university, the more clear it is to me that I am learning a great deal more attending now... I wouldn't have been bumming around Australia, but I'd be one of those students who just sit back and watch the others talk.

Random Thought

I was thinking last week of how we anthropomorphise things, i.e., give human qualities to non-human objects or even animals... eg. treating our pets like humans, that kind of thing. But what is it called when we take humans and assign non-human attributes?

Back on Home Soil (yet) again...

This time, I left a very wintry morning in Calgary -- blowing snow and dropping temperatures -- for the relatively balmy climes of Vancouver home turf...

... this time on the de-iced wings of Air Canada. I was sitting in the back of the plane, in the "baby section", as far away as possible from the business flyers in the front section. Sat next to a couple with 3-under-3, same as Allan & Cheryl, except they had a 3-year old and a set of fraternal twins (boy-girl), I'm guessing about 6-8 months old. The husband was from Ottawa, the wife from Mexico City, and they've been living in Calgary for 3 years. They were just on their way to Mexico City, and they had to stop in Vancouver to change planes. They looked pretty frazzled, and I could really sympathize with their situation!

Still trying to post photos from the ERA Christmas party, but having trouble with the upload tool for Yahoo photos... it keeps conking out towards the end of every upload.

Back on Home Soil again...

...ahhh, green Vancouver grass instead of brown Calgary grass!!!!!

Flew in this morning on the wings of WestJet, leaving behind a balmy January day in Calgary of 15 degrees!

Back on Home Soil

ahhh, green grass!!!!!

New York City may have a lot of things, but it sure is lacking in green grass... and healthy trees... and clean air... I'm back from a crazy week in the Big Apple, and I am in serious need of a shower. All I can think of is waiting for the subway and peering down at the sludge between the tracks and thinking "How I would hate to fall into THAT." It brings the excellent documentary Dark Days, which I saw last year, into perspective.

As much as I love travelling, I'm very happy and relieved that I made it back from this trip, considering that only 24 hours ago or so I was in the middle of Times Square with half a million other people, corralled like cattle in a holding pen, to watch the ball drop for New Year's. It's a real experience, like nothing I've ever done before, nor am I likely to do again.