September Weekends in Vancouver

More and more I start enjoying the downtown of Vancouver. Intensive hiking and road trip months of the summer are coming to the end with the appearance of warm colors of maple trees. At this point I realize that I've done enough exploration of the West Coast to satisfy my adventure seeking soul for now and let the other side of myself to develop at a professional and personal levels.

It is the second weekend since July of me staying in the city enjoying the calm life of Vancouver. Last weekend Alex S. came down from Seattle, which of course called for all you can eat sushi and rich in calories breakfasts with coffee. I love them as much as I love the days beginning and ending with those. In most of the cases it means that there are friends out of town that I haven’t seen for a while. It also means conversations with them will be much enjoyed as we’ve missed each other’s presence.

This Sunday while I was enjoying Internet browsing in downtown's Blenz Coffee place with Dasha at Robson and Bute, there was a man sitting right beside us in huge headphones listening to music from his laptop and non-distractively tapping with his fingers on the table from time to time. When he was about to leave I asked him whether he was a musician. The man appeared to be a composer, also multimedia artist and a poet.

Roland Bastien started his career in Avan-Garde scene in 1979. He collaborated with numerous artists and wrote over 70 chamber music scores and 100 piano solo scores. As a composer, was the finalist at Elisabeth Schneider Foundation in Germany in 2000. He performed as a pianist. He won the overall prize at The Fourth International Poetry Competition in 2006. Some of his poems that he wrote after 90's are greatly influenced by his interesting life experience during Buddhist Monastery journey.

Here are some of Roland's Haiku and poems ( poems section).
Perhaps, an empty taught

For now,
Revenons a nos moutons (come back to what we were doing),
As French would say,
And I am back to codes and antennas

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus talks to Owen Bennett-Jones during The Interview

Muhammad Yunus, economics professor, received a Noble Prize for creating an organization that would lend money to people in need. It is completely based on trust. Who would think that such an idea would bring him to the point where he is standing right now: after 30 years he is leading the Gremeen Bank with 6.7 million customers! He lends small amounts of money and develops a program for people to repay it.

Muhammad believes that the world can exist without poverty. He insists in the interview that it is not the fault of poor people that they are poor. It is the fault of the ones above them. So, they, people with better fortune, have to help them. He also brings up an interesting example of a plumber and CEO of some big company sitting at a table drinking whatever they like... and both of them are respecting each other, both of them are making the same amount of money.

I don't know whether this would work in North America, but it proved to be successful in the third world countries with a large population below the poverty level. Nevertheless, the idea reminds me of the Canadian system with a strong social support for the RF (regular folk), taxing harder the rich and providing cheaper services like medical assistance for everyone. There is a potential to slowly realize his ideas into life in the rest of the world, as long as the critical mass of supporters is out there.

Audio Interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/the_interview.shtml

Home Fusion Reactor - I thought it was a joke

I just came back from the club, partying it up with a some friends from work. A few pages were still open on my laptop that I was planning to shut down for the night. Being all myself, I didn't want to just close it, and gave it a few more minutes of attention. Here is what I came across.

Home made fusion reactor by a 17 year old. "Pumps, deuterium source, neutron bubble dosimeter? Check." http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/03/high_school_stu.html
Full report: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/radioactive-boy-scout


...and if you need to get some deuteruim gas for your next fusion experiement ; ), check out "deuterium oxide" following this link: http://unitednuclear.com/chem.htm, from which you'll be able to get "pure deuterium gas" for just $10!