Mini Film Review: Sharkwater

At first, I thought this film was another "Jaws" clone, and I wasn't interested. Then I saw the trailer, and the film looked more like a nature documentary combined with a bit of an adventure tale which appealed to me so I went to see it with Steph and some of our friends.

About 40% of the film was nature documentary, and there was a lot of gorgeous film. The guy who made the film is an underwater cameraman and he has shot lots of footage of sharks in the wild, including schooling of hammerhead sharks which has rarely been seen before. It was stunning. The guy obviously loved sharks and tried his best to persuade the audience to like them too. One of the most interesting things I learned was that sharks can sense electromagnetic fields (which I knew) but to such an extent that they can sense whether a person is excited or anxious. Apparently, most of the sharks he filmed were so shy that they wouldn't come near him unless he kept super-calm and lowered his heart rate to 30 or 40 beats per minute. That's pretty cool.

The other 60% of the film was a documentary explaining about how we humans are rapidly wiping sharks of the face of the Earth :( We have reduced global shark populations to 10% of what they were 30 or 40 years ago, and will probably drive them to extinction in the near future. And we are doing all this for the stupidest of reasons - for their fins. Shark fins are eaten in a soup and are considered a fine delicacy, even though they are tasteless and only add texture. They are also made into medicines because people think that sharks never get sick and in particular don't get cancer. There is no medical evidence to support any benefits to consuming shark fins, and in actual fact they do get cancer and the numbers are on the rise thanks to pollution of the oceans. The sharks are caught on long lines (which also catch and kill lots of other animals such as endangered species of turtle), have their fins hacked off whilst they are still alive, and then they are thrown back into the sea to bleed to death and drown. Sickening.

Anyway this is supposed to be a mini review. Overall this film was great but I wouldn't say I enjoyed it because frankly it was pretty harrowing in places. I strongly urge you to go see it though - maybe thanks to this film and the people who made it, sharks might still have a chance.

Oh yeah, and it hasn't rained since Saturday...

Pinch me, because I must be dreaming.

India Arie vs. Badly Drawn Boy

We saw two gigs back to back this week - India Arie on Monday and BDB on Tuesday. Both gigs started around 10.30pm and finished between 12.30am and 1am, and after getting up early for Cypress on Sunday morning we are both knackered already and its only Wednesday. Need to get some sleep before Whistler this weekend...

But I digress. On with the battle. Who will win? Let's find out.

In the red corner:


The support act was LeRoy Bell And His Only Friends. These guys were pretty good. Some good songs, some not so good. LeRoy himself had a strong, smooth voice that was a pleasure to listen to.

The audience of this gig was crazy! They were totally up for it, and were dancing vigorously through the support act, and even while the DJ filled before India came on stage. They were even singing along to the DJ's records. It was a great atmosphere, and felt very friendly.

India Arie came in with huge hair, sunglasses, and a posh frock. She looked like a soul diva. But within a minute she dumped all that stuff (the original hair was a wig :) ) and was getting on with it. The show was kind of theatrical in places and somehow very BIG - more performance than I expected. She stopped frequently to talk to the audience, about all kinds of crazy stuff like how she met Nelson Mandela, and how she had been late to the gig because of an upset stomach :) And the music was awesome. She has a fantastic voice of course, but the song arrangements were funked up a bit and the rhythms were infectious. Everyone in the Commodore seemed to be having a lot of fun - on and off the stage - which was great. She even finished with Ready For Love which is my favourite. What can I say. Top! I was relieved too that Steph really enjoyed it, as I kind of talked her into going...

...and in the blue corner:


Badly Drawn Boy actually had two support acts: Lizzie and Adem (sorry no link for Lizzie - I can't find anything on the internet). Lizzie was a solo singer/songwriter from the US who had some really catchy tunes and a knockout voice - kind of Jenny Lewis crossed with a bit of K.T. Tunstall. I enjoyed her set a lot. Adem also had talent, but his songs were often slow and kind of morose, and generally seemed to bring down the atmosphere a bit. He was at his best when he upped the tempo a little. He also kept telling everyone to be quiet so he could be heard - what planet are you from, mate? The jury is out on this guy.

The main event was interesting. I felt it started off pretty workmanlike, with Damon and his band scooting from one song into the next with barely a pause or a hello. Then he started making a mistake or two, and I guess he felt he needed to explain things, and pretty soon he was telling us how this was the last night of the tour and that he was exhausted and missed his family, and all sorts of stuff. He also seemed to be in a melancholy mood and mentioned some friends and family who had recently died. Anyway, it felt like the audience got much more into the whole thing after he started to talk to them so honestly, and he seemed to enjoy it more too. The performance just got better and better from there, and there were some superb tracks amongst the many he played (it was around 2.5 hours in all!). I have to say I am not the biggest fan of Badly Drawn Boy, but nevertheless I was thoroughly entertained.

And the winner is....


India Arie. For me personally, anyway. She surprised me by giving a lavish and heartfelt stage performance, and the whole atmosphere of the gig (due in large part to the crowd) was second to none. Respect due. But Badly Drawn Boy was a pretty close second - call it a points decision.

More diets

So we didn't go to Cypress the next day after all, because we were too knackered to get up early. Which turned out to be very good fortune, because the mountain closed that day due to high winds. Rah.

Our trip to Cypress got postponed until yesterday and this time we lucked out because the weather was quite nice. That statement probably sounds unremarkable until you consider that for the last two weeks it has rained here in Vancouver almost non-stop. You wouldn't believe it unless you lived here, but boy is it wet in the winter. So a "quite nice day" was very lucky, actually. The snow conditions weren't fantastic - kind of crunchy with a soft underside, and unpredictable. Steph was skiing and I did some snowshoeing and we both enjoyed ourselves and got thoroughly tired, and then came home and ordered organic pizza and scoffed it double quick. Lovely.

Not too much else has been happening for us since my last post. I went to the doctor about my stomach problems and got some blood tests, some of which were checking my liver and kidney function and some were allergy tests on certain foods. They all turned out fine. Last week I had a good week for stomach trouble, and thought it might be connected to my no-wheat diet I was on, but then at the weekend I had lots of problems so I gave up that idea. I'll keep trying to cut out different things and see what happens.

This week is going to be busy. Tonight, we are off to see India Arie at the Commodore Ballroom. I kind of talked Steph into going so I hope she doesn't hate it. Then tomorrow (!) we see Badly Drawn Boy at Richards - not ideal having the two gigs back to back but there you go. As if that wasn't enough, on Friday evening we are off to Whistler for the weekend and the last snow-based activity of the season.

Bye for now!

Mini Film Review: 300

Imagine 300 blokes with six-packs and jockstraps beating the crap out of the cast of Lawrence of Arabia, in sloooow motion. There, I just saved you the price of a ticket to see this movie.

I was expecting this film to be crap, but it wasn't. It looks gorgeous which I did expect, but there is also some decent acting in places, and a few times it made me feel the odd emotion or two. That was a pleasant surprise. The fight sequences overall are superb, mainly because they look so sumptuous although the choreography is good too. It's a pretty violent movine, but the blood on display is computer-generated and didn't really bother me - it doesn't seem particularly real. In fact the whole film has the air of a video game about it, but with better graphics. It even has a few boss fights.

It probably dawned on the makers of this film at some point that they were making a bloke movie featuring hundreds of hunky guys wearing next to nothing. I suspect that is the reason why they threw in a few scenes of gratuitous naked female flesh, because I couldn't see any other point to them. But make no mistake, this is a bloke's movie and as such it provided above average entertainment for this bloke for almost 2 hours. And Steph liked it too, but YGOMV (Your Girlfriend's Opinion May Vary).

Visitors, diets, and conferences

About time I updated this blog I think! There's been lots happening in the past few weeks.

Steph's parents visited us for two weeks. The weather was not so good as last year - more typical of February really - lots of rain. We all managed to catch colds too, which wasn't so great. So not as active as perhaps they were hoping, and no ski trip to Whistler, but overall I think they enjoyed themselves. Oh yeah, and here are the photos we took while they were around (mostly the Chinese New Year Parade).

I went to get my gums checked out with a specialist as my dentist was concerned about how far they are receding. The specialist told me I need a gum graft to save my lower front teeth from eventually falling out. I have that booked for March 23rd now, and its going to cost me $1800 - ouch. I am hoping that the health insurance might cover some of it.

Steph and I had a week on a detox diet. It was kind of an experiment to see how it affected us. We were allowed fruit and veg, nuts and some kinds of rice but that was about it. It was tough thinking of things to eat sometimes, and preparing lunch for work in the mornings was a real drag (too much vegetable chopping!) but generally it wasn't too bad. I discovered I have a problem with chickpeas! This last week, Steph has been reintroducing foods to see if they have any adverse effects.

I however, did not slowly reintroduce my foods. I went to GDC instead! I flew to San Francisco on Tuesday, and got back late last night. It was very enjoyable - some really good talks, some not so good, but educational overall. Bumped into a few old friends along the way which was nice. Had a few nice meals too; I even went to an Italian restaurant called Kuleto's (just off Union Square) that I remembered from my American road trip holiday years ago, and it was still very good. I've been regretting those meals out since though - I think the jump from a super-healthy diet to lots of rich foods was too much for my digestive system, so next week might be a trip to the doctor :( About time, really.

Today is going to be laid back I hope - surprise surprise, it's raining (a lot). I might have to do some tax return stuff - I think I owe them a good chunk of money. Boo! This evening we are going to the theatre with some friends, and tomorrow it's off to Cypress for skiing etc. (snowshoeing for me).

That's all for now folks.

New photo site is finished

I have finally finished transferring all our old photo albums from .Mac to Flickr. From now on, all our photos will go straight onto Flickr - the old .Mac site is dead. In fact, the old site will disappear mid-April when our .Mac subscription expires, so update your bookmark if you have one!

We made it to the Chinese New Year Parade on Sunday. It was very entertaining. I'll post some photos when I get round to sorting them out.

Birthdays and visitors

Monday (12th) was my birthday. Happy birthday to me! I am now 34 years old. It wasn't particularly eventful. I had to work all day, and then Steph had to work a little late in the evening as she is very busy. We made a nice jambalaya to eat when we got home though, and had a bottle of wine from our trip to the Okanagan last year - a cheeky little Gewurztraminer. Very pleasant.

Steph's parents arrived on Wednesday. They are staying with us for a fortnight. So far the weather hasn't been too great, but it could be worse too - it's not raining all the time :) I don't think they mind too much though - they are here to take it easy. We just got back from a trip to Granville Island where we bought some lovely looking sausages for tomorrow evening - we are making gourmet bangers and mash. Yum. It was John's birthday yesterday (Steph's Dad) so tonight we are going out to Cin Cin for a slap up meal. Food is the best thing, isn't it?

Tomorrow we might watch the Chinese New Year Parade if it isn't raining too much. Failing that, we will put our feet up. Hope you are having a nice weekend too!

Big White Ski Trip

Last weekend (9th-11th) was the annual work ski trip, and this year we went to Big White. That's in the interior of BC, about 50km from Kelowna and close to the Okanagan valley; that's the place we went wine-tasting last year.

There were around 40 people on this year's trip, a substantial increase from last year. As usual the journey on the bus was gruelling - 7.5 hours there and 6.5 back. We got there around 11pm on Friday evening. We were tired, but still squeezed in a little beer before bed ;)

Big White apparently has the nickname "Big White-Out" because its location is often locked in low cloud, making visibility poor. We were lucky on the Saturday to get sunshine and blue skies for several hours. Steph went off skiing with Lauren and Woody who were also on the trip. I tried to get myself onto an organized snowshoe tour, but they couldn't find the guide who was doing it. Great. By 12.30pm I'd still heard nothing, so I thought I'd give up on it and snowshoe by myself.

At Big White, you snowshoe on the cross-country ski trails in the Nordic area. With starting late, I only got an hour and a half on the trails before they closed for the day. A lot of the trails I walked initially were kind of dull - rather like a road through a forest that was covered in snow. Towards the end of my walk though, I discovered a 0.5k cross-country ski trail that was double black diamond difficulty. This was much better - narrow and with plenty of gradient. I really started to enjoy it at that point, and vowed to find more of those trails the next day.

After the snow fun, we had apres-ski put on by the tour company, and then hot-tubbed for a while. The hotel this year was fine but not as luxurious as last year, and the single hot tub was super-crowded, but we squeezed in somehow. Later we went out for some food at a nice restaurant called The Copper Kettle - recommended if you ever go to Big White; it was the best place to eat that we found.

There was more skiing and boarding on Sunday, and I got out early and went straight for the good trails on my snowshoes. The weather was grey and it snowed gently most of the time. I did a good 5km in total over about 2 hours or so, of which about 2.5km was on the hard but fun trails. The last trail I walked called "The Juice Is Loose" was the toughest by far. It climbed steeply up a hillside for about 0.75km and the snow was really deep; it was pretty much like breaking a fresh trail. My shoes would sink a good 20 or 30cm with each step. Heavy going! At some points it got quite hard to follow the trail - it was marked by orange tags on the trees which was fortunate because there was little sign of any other footprints. The only tracks I did see looked like paw prints, but there were no shoe prints accompanying them so maybe it was a wolf? Eeeek. Needless to say, that motivated me to keep going at a reasonable pace :)

All in all, it was a great weekend. A long way to go, but worth it I think as we both had a great time. Now that we have worked at Radical for a while, we know more people which made the whole weekend a little more sociable. I think we preferred Sun Peaks from last year on balance though - maybe they will go back there next year. I've uploaded a few photos of my snowshoeing to Flickr - find them here. I'll try to get together some more photos of other stuff.

Keane love Vancouver

Steph and I went to see Keane on Wednesday evening at the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown. This was the last date of their North American tour, which was supposed to happen in October but got delayed due to some rehab issues.

They put on an excellent live show, right from the beginning where they began with a crescendo of synthesizer and red light - somewhat reminiscent of Muse. The lead singer Tom was pretty manic, and danced and jumped around the stage like a grasshopper on speed. Despite that, his vocals were faultless and as a whole the band sounded great through the Orpheum's sound system. The theatre was a pretty cool venue - inside it is somewhat churchlike in grandeur. They had a good lightshow too to jazz things up.

They played all their best songs from the two recent albums, interspersed with Tom chatting quite a bit to the audience, mainly to tell us how great we were. Things started off fairly subdued, but they soon got into it and pretty soon everyone was cheering and yelling. And singing along of course, as was I. The lead singer let the crowd do the singing a few times (most notably on "Somewhere Only We Know") and we certainly held our end up :) I don't think I've really heard a louder crowd at a gig in Vancouver. The atmosphere was great. I hope it will encourage Keane to come back again soon, because we had a great time.