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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...

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-...

There's this one space near my house where I can hear if a bus is coming, but I can't see it. And when I hear a bus, I better be running, because to make it to the bus stop, I need to cross a fairly busy road. Yesterday, I was in just that predicament. And I ran. World record running. I could have bested a Jamaican sprinter. Granted, that sprinter is probably 73, had one too many rum and cokes, and is missing a toe due to an unfortunate fishing incident... but still, pretty fast. And the bus stopped! Good thing there is someone getting on at that stop, embarking on an adventure that very well might have changed his life. I zip across one side of the northbound lanes, which thanks to a light that just changed a couple hundred metres away, has zero traffic. As I reach the island, the southbound traffic in both lanes actually stop for me just so that I can make it to the bus. If Ottawa drivers get a bad rap, certainly the rap-givers never saw that sight! Just as I run right behin...

So the OC Transpo strike started a year ago. And looking back at it all, I still have these annoyed feelings about the fact that it happened, and they didn't really get anywhere, since the reason for it ending was originally on the table as a way to prevent it. And lately, I've been getting more and more annoyed with the service. I actually called and made a complaint about an issue, but that doesn't go far enough. Maybe I'll write them a letter old-person-style, stamps and all. That first day of the strike wasn't unlike today - blizzardy. It felt like the first true day of winter - just in time for the Christmas season too! And only 9 more days until I'm done school for the year. Then a bit longer. Then what? I do have some ideas, some of which (unfortunately) involve even more school. We'll see what grows to fruition. Speaking of school, here's a sequence I worked on with my teammates for one of our final projects: Dave, our model, is part of an ad cam...

The conference room at NewCap radio, home of Hot899 and LiVE885, have very comfy chairs.I was there yesterday with my fellow group work team for a school project. It was a wonderful experience... I secretly wanted to see the actual offices and recording areas, though, possibly to make funny faces at John Moran while he's on the air. Or, you know, not. I finally backed up my Disney photos to a dvd, so that I could finally delete them off my memory cards. I didn't want to risk losing them to technological snafus, even thought they are on two different hard drives. I did have a hard drive die on me, after all. But I bet losing all those pictures would give me a great reason to head back! Supposedly, Halloween is pretty fun 'round those parts, and then the next day, like magic, it's Christmas. The other pictures, above, are various ones from the summer. Yes, I finally had breakfast at Cora's! It was quite delicious, and so big that it was worth my while to take the rest...

I had a presentation on April 1, and I brought my camera with me, thinking that I would record it for later playback. Just as it was my turn to go up, I chickened out of such a plan (ended up doing very well on my presentation... perhaps I should have but oh well), and after the presentations were all done, I came home. Over a week later, I go looking for my camera. It's not in my room, its not on the main floor... it's not under my bed (few things end up there, my skates being one of them). Is it at Prashanta's? Nope. Does Prabin have it? Nope. Is it at work? Nope. Mary's? Nah. Where could it have gone? I'm scratching my head, before I reluctantly admit that perhaps I lost it. I asked my teacher about it, and who teaches in that room next. This leads to a dead end, though with sympathies - nobody likes to hear a camera has gone missing. Because of the long weekend, OC Transpo lost and found isn't too easy to get hold of. Do I really need to buy a new camera 2 w...

To get from my house to Disneyworld, it would cost approximately $3920 by taxi. Snowman from one of the first real snowfalls in Ottawa. The Christmas tree at the Train Station on that crazy day when Prashanta and I got robbed, lost, parking-ticketed, and caught trying to sell a train ticket. It was around this time when the car got broken in to. We're none the wiser! A Wall-E Paddle ball! I forgot this one in my recent Wall-E post. Deep Snow as the buses go on strike. Milkshakes at The Works. Poker Chips. I won that game. Algonquin. Buses are still not running, so there's nobody at the station. First day back for buses! Spinning around in a chair, getting ready for Disney rides. Cousin Maya playing with Eve. My ideal umbrella. Hearts in the toilet. No, this isn't commentary on love. Sometimes, little hearts just end up in the toilet. The wine I tried the other day. Strawberry Pancakes. I got my March bus pass today, at a cost to me of $25.00, instead of the usual $62 n chan...

There was a Friday in November that I considered to be among the worst days of my life. I had bought $100 worth of presents for Christmas, and brought food to work in my Ratatouille bowl. That night, Prashanta picked me up from work, and we went downtown to eat and then meet up with some friends. While at the restaurant, somehow, someone had broken into the car and stolen the gifts and my backpack, and even the spare change ubiquitous to any car. At the time, I thought I had 6 DS games and my mp3 player in by backpack. All I could think about was how rare The World Ends with You is and that I wouldn't want to restart it from scratch. Or how many crosswords I had completed in Crosswords DS, or how I was going to give my mp3 player away whenever I break down and boy an iPod touch. Fortunately, I found my mp3 player while cleaning my room! Suddenly, that day didn't seem so bad. And the other day, I was cleaning out my locker at work where low and behold I found my DS g...

Over the years, my wallet and my bus pass have developed a great relationship where they stick together. This help me, since I always know where my bus pass is (unless of course, I don't know where my wallet is, which happens on occasion). It also helps my wallet and bus pass, since the two of them can talk and cuddle in my pocket. I've only recently decided to split the two up, if only to protect the pass from accidental loss or cold-related fracturing. Plus people make fun of me when they see it! Turns out that my leaving it behind wasn't premature - Transit workers voted to reject the city's offer. I've had an inkling since the beginning that this strike would last a while, but I'm really starting to get scared at how long it may be before all is well. To add to my troubles, my laptop needs to be sent away for servicing. Supposedly, my laptop has a fan, and that fan is not spinning at the speed that it's supposed to be. As a result, my computer can becom...

Thursday. Thursday is the day we find out how much longer this transit strike of ours will last. There's a small part of me that is crossing his even littler fingers in hopes that the wonderful drivers, maintenance staff, and others will vote (thanks to some federal intervention), to have their say on the city's most recent offer, in favour of the offer. this means buses, after multiple inspections and revving up, will be back within one and a half weeks from now. The bigger part of me, ever sceptical, knows that the vote will ruin any chances of getting back to travel normalcy and that buses won't be back on the streets until the better part of January - at the earliest. A little Transit Union-run website has this lovely message for its members: BREAKING NEWS - January 4th, 2009 Forced Second Vote On City's Latest Offer Details Known Dear Brothers and Sisters, The vote ordered by Minister of Labour Rona Ambrose and conducted by Canada Industrial Relati...

Just after writing my last blog, I thought about what I would say to the mayor if I bumped into him on the street. What better place to get inspiration that his Web site ? There, he blogged about day seven of the strike, not unlike I did. Only, while my post talks of how I'm surviving not having buses, his post was deeply soaked in the unfortunateness of this whole situation, how reasonable he is being, and how his new plan is all about improving safety. After reading a few of his posts, I decided to write him a letter. And after the letter wouldn't send through the site, I just faxed it to him (yay for that nifty feature I never use on my printer). My letter was strong in its neutrality: Faced with this transit strike, many people have flocked to Web sites and Facebook groups looking to get around town. I am sure there are some great success stories proving that Ottawa is a great place with great people. We have heard extreme stories in the news of how people c...

Day five was fun. I arrived at work an hour and a half early (when rides are offered, you don't really want to push your luck). This allowed me the opportunity to sit down and have breakfast with a coworker. Subway breakfasts have become boring ever since they stopped actually preparing eggs and stopped carrying round 4" buns; they're microwave-ready egg patties leave me with an underwhelming 'meh'. I learned that there was freezing rain going on, so thankfully another coworker offered me a ride home. On Day Six of this wondrous OC Transpo bus strike, I did the inevitable: I walked to work. With a car, there are half a dozen different routes to take to get there, and two buses (that take the same basic route). That said, there's no convenient way to actually walk there, not without having to overshoot and circle back, or walking from point A to point B to point C to the Destination. It's all very awkward, and a lot of it has to do with how poorly planned ou...