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Three of these four pictures were taken waiting at bus stops. The last one was taken walking to a bus stop where I had to wait. I'm not happy that my local bus is on the list being considered to be downgraded from a regular black route to a red peak period route, going from available morning to night everyday to rush hour-only route for school kids at 8 and 3. The city has the idea that they can ave money by taking the 98.6% of Ottawa that live within 5 minutes of a bus stop and shrinking it to 95% within 5 minutes... some of the time [ article ]! It's bad enough that I have to wait so long at night between connections, but at least there is a connection. It doesn't make any sense to make it hard for people to get home, especially at night. Aren't buses supposed to be an alternative to keep people from driving after drinking? How about the parents who can't always pick up their kids after going out with friends? Or all the older people who need buses to kneel for th

For all the trouble that winter causes, it really does have it's fun side. Skiing, skating, snowmen, snow forts, ice hotels, ice sculptures. Winterlude combines a few of these into a really fun festival just when people usually start tiring of the cold season. I love going down and seeing the exhibits and sculptures and people out enjoying themselves (and Beavertails)! Fortunately I managed to make my way downtown this year (it's been three or four years since I last went - even longer since I made it to the Quebec side of the festivities). There were some very nice sculptures this year. Perhaps my favourite was this interactive domino-like sculpture that had windows that were perfectly aligned. It gave you the tunneling effect of looking in a reflection of a reflection of a mirror, without seeing yourself. Very cool! Perhaps it's because I'm more aware of these kinds of things, but the event seems to get increasingly more branded by sponsors. Rogers and Samsung were on

There's so much waiting done each and every day. It's so easy to become annoyed and pace while waiting for the waiting to end. I do most of my waiting at bus stops (and increasingly, O-Train stops), and for a while, I took a fair number of pictures for those 5- or 12- or 30-minute waits. Then DS games, books, and eventually the iPhone got in the way, demanding my full attention not only at stops, but for the whole commute. Yet lately, a sudden reversal. Perhaps I should apologize now! Speaking of iPhone, the Google Translate app is available, free, and pretty much the most amazing tool ever. Just speak into it, and it can speak your phrase back in another language! Hoshi Sato might even be impressed. I want to go to a non-English-speaking area and see if I can really get by using it to communicate. Would anyone like to take a trip to India, China, or Mexico? In fact, Google if you're listening, I would blog and Youtube the whole experience! Photos: I love the view of the O-

Perhaps the best thing about Winter is snow. It's amazing how it can completely change the look of the land- and cityscapes. Unfortunately, in order to be able to get anywhere, it needs to be put somewhere. Often, it's in a corner of a parking lot, which creates a sizable mountain that, as a kid, I loved to climb. Because there were no nearby hills to slide down (that I knew about, but I have since discovered a few...) these mountains of unwanted snow were where I would toboggan and slide and dig out forts. They were canvases where a young Ben could let his imagination go. I haven't climbed any this year. Yet. The flip side of winter is the cold. When you aren't playing, when you have to go from point A to B (or when I'm commuting home, A to B to C to D), the cold is a nuisance. Salt stains everything an undesirable grey, and waiting 10 minutes feels like an hour. Seeing your bus pull away as you run to the platform is the most depressing sight, because it means wai

One of the small things in life that I truly enjoy is the calm after a storm. One moment, it's thundering and lightning bolts touching down all around, and the next, the sky is clear and the sun is beaming, as if it's happy to be back. Maybe it's the quick reversal of weather that intensifies the beauty that's all around that makes me not take it, at least for a short while, for granted. Last week, I had a moment when I was waiting for a bus, after the big "snowmageddon" (and I use that term in quotes, because it wasn't a bad storm at all, at least not by Ottawa's standards) where, yes, it wasn't the best weather to be commuting through, but the next morning had a certain crispness to it. It was calming, despite the traffic zooming by. It's that feeling that, if it could be bottled, I could make a fortune. I took a picture instead. And yesterday, it had started snowing in the afternoon. Seemingly out of nowhere, huge flakes began to fall slow

More pictures here: Flickr Vancouver Set Ignore the fact for a moment that I went to Vancouver in November and it's now the following February. Time passes quickly, and everything you want to do always seems to get bypassed for all the things you have to do. That makes making the time for the important things in life that much more of a priority. It's for this reason that I'm finally sitting down to write about my trip. It's also for this reason that I was extremely excited that my friend Cat invited me all the way to the other end of the country for a week mostly to hang out and see and do a bunch of the things that I've only heard about. Granville Island, Stanley Park, Cypress Mountain, ferry, Mickey's cache, Skytrain. Before this trip, the farthest West I had travelled was a weekend camping trip to Banff, on a month-long french program in Saskatoon (interestingly, where I met Cat to begin with). Travelling to both Saskatoon and Banff was all done by bus. Slow