happylife

Traffic pattern

Most streets in Downtown cross at right angles and some of them are one-way. They are wide enough to hold three or four lanes. This street used to have three car lanes and its traffic pattern was changed last year with two car lanes, one bike lane, and one parking lane. I think it was a good change because it is safer for cyclists and no traffic jam was caused. Burrard bridge is a historical bridge which has three car lanes on both sides now and I hear that the traffic pattern is to be changed in the same way this spring. Different from this one-way street, Burrard bridge is sometimes jammed with cars. Nevertheless, this change is planned in order to change the car flow from Burrard bridge to Granville bridge which are parallel each other. I'm looking forward to this change because my apartment is standing very close to Burrard bridge and it is a little bit noisy owing to the cars running on the bridge.

Eagle obstruction

There was no airplane except for me because of the strong wind. I was happy to occupy the circuit myself. I got clearance from ATC saying "You're No.1 for runway 12." However, when I was on final approach, he said "Pull up and go around!" There was no arriving airplane in my sight and it took seconds for me to understand what was happening. It was an eagle obstruction. Of course it was not an F15 Eagle but a real eagle staying on the runway. As he is on the top of a food chain, he has nothing to fear and hardly to be sent away. The ATC guys had to drive on the runway and set off firecrackers whose smoke could be seen well from the sky. Various things happen while flying.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year's day is January 29th in 2006 and was February 9th in 2005, which differs every year. That is because they are using a calendar system different from the international Gregorian calendar. As you know the earth is revolving around the sun while rotating on its own axis. Approximately the revolving period of the earth is the year and the rotating period is the day. The day is the most essential time unit for us because we usually get up, have meals, work, and go to bed every day. The year is also the indispensable time unit mainly for agriculture. If the day and the year were synchronized perfectly, we didn't have to worry about calendar systems. Unfortunately the one year does not equal to 365 days nor 366 days, it is in between and is even decreasing gradually because of the actual time of the day is slightly getting longer every day. Although these errors seem to be slight, they accumulate in the longer time range causing serious problems. In order to correct these errors, and provide other useful time units like the month and the week, we have invented and have been using various calendar systems. In Chinese calendar, they think of the time unit of the month as important. The month is derived from the moon, and originally the revolving period of the month is one month, which is not synchronized with the day nor the year, and making Chinese calendar system more complicated. It is so complicated that I can't understand fully. I heard that they use "leap month" and one week consists of 6 days. It's interesting to learn about other calendar systems.

Blue morning

I often wake up before dawn, around seven, and go back to bed after doing something, drinking a glass of water, going to washroom, and checking whether urgent email is received or not. Around this time, the view inside and outside of the room is bluish, and my mind tend to be blue too. I feel blue and down before dawn. I don't know the reason for that, however a lot of people are said to feel as I do. I have once heard that it is the golden hour when most people die. I think that is because their mental power is at weakest around this time. All these blue time and mind are blown away when the sun comes up. The power of the sun is so strong that my mind changes dramatically and I can sleep again with happy and peaceful mind. It is my favorite time in a day.

Midnight liquor store

It's very easy to get alcohol in Tokyo. We can get it not only at liquor stores but also at 24 hour convenient stores and even from vending machines distributed all around the city. Usually we don't need any identification to purchase it and even an elementary school pupil can easily get it. We often see people drinking beer in a park, a roadside and a train. On the other hand in Vancouver, alcohol is strictly limited. We can get it usually in a daytime at specially limited liquor stores. I know only 5 stores in Vancouver, most of which are closed early at night and on weekends. This liquor store is the only one I know which is open until midnight. As we cannot drink alcohol in public space like in a park, we cannot enjoy fireworks drinking alcohol in summer. I heard that all these limitations are settled to prevent the first nations to be drunken and cause serious troubles.

Bellingham

It was a hectic day today. Soon after waking up before noon, I hurried to the airport to take the flight lesson, however, on the Granville Bridge I was caught again by a man with a yellow jacket who is so called a "police man". He charged me $196 after a discount from the original price of $356. I know that this is a kind of psychological tactics of the police who wants to handle victims as many as possible without arguing. I was a little bit shocked but got recovered in a few minutes. $196 is only the fee for one hour flight lesson. That's it! I know I am hopeless with money. Anyway, the weather was bad and I could do just circuit training in the gusting condition. After the lesson, I drove to Bellingham to pick up my friend who has just come back from a Christmas trip to Vancouver. Bellingham is the city of the U.S. and has an international airport. I passed the border twice in less than an hour. As the sun had already set and it was raining, the window view of my car was terrible, which made me tired. After coming back home, I started cleaning my clothes because I have nothing to wear tomorrow. I'm now waiting for the clothes dried. All I want to do now is sleeping as soon as possible.

Rice

As you know Japanese people live on a diet chiefly of rice. Decades before I was born, they had only a bowl of steamed rice with a cup of miso soup and pieces of picked vegetables. As we kept such eating habits for more than thousand years, we have now longer bowels and shorter legs, which are suitable for producing and digesting rice. Though I am accustomed to Western food, I still often have rice. Today I got the new pack of rice. Black bottle is "Gohandesuyo", seaweed boiled down in sweetened soy sauce and the red bottle is Korean "Kimchi", hot pickled Chinese cabbage. Only with these relishes, I can enjoy rice as much as possible. It's a perfect meal for me.

Underground parking

Just the same as other apartments in Vancouver, my apartment has an underground parking lot under the building. It has two layer of parking space which can hold more than one hundred cars and all the residents can rent the lot for $35 per month if they want. Of course I rent one of them. It is super convenient because I can go anywhere without an umbrella. At the entrance of the parking lot, there is a remote controlled gate which can be open by pushing the controller button set on the sun visor of my car. It's just like "Open sesame!" Once you experience this convenient system, you can't stop using it. The only problem I'm recognizing is that I drive my car too easily, that is I'm losing the chance of walking and spending extra money for shopping things which I wouldn't have purchased without a car.

SVFR

We cannot usually fly under the condition of below VFR minima, which is 3 mile visibility, horizontally 1 mile and vertically 500 feet from any clouds. However, there is an exception which is called SVFR, special visual flight rules. If we had more than 1 mile visibility, could have land in sight, and the ATC permitted, we can fly under SVFR. Today the weather was under VFR minima, but I flew under SVFR and did circuit training. Usually the circuit height is 800 feet in my airport, there were so many clouds that I couldn't keep 800 feet and made 600 foot circuits. As the lower circuit has different view and requires different procedures, it was difficult to make good circuits avoiding clouds. It was a good training.

Slow start

It was almost noon when I got up. The sky was overcast and looked like the one late in the evening. I felt like the day was almost end though I had just got up. All the animals get hungry even if they are only sleeping without doing anything. I am not the exception and ate the leftover in the refrigerator. I was so tired and sleepy that I could do nothing productive. I was just watching TV, sleeping on the bed, and eating something. I was a super lazy man whole day long although it was the starting day of the new year. Anyway, who settled this day as the first day of the year?