Olympic Torch Relay

is in Toronto, tomorrow evening! Definitely attending the arrival!

Olympic mugs — have bought several different kinds.

Go, Canada!

Revival

Haven’t been here in a while.

In the midst of an (horrible) exam season. Gotta tell ya’, mass education is truly a hellish invention of mankind.

Plans for the coming winter break:

Cavalcade of Lights at the Toronto Old City Hall (photos will follow)

Downsview Park’s Trail of Lights (photos will follow)

Finally put those skates on and blast that puck

Finally put those x-country skis on

Finally get enough sleep

Pretty modest, but fine for now.

Catch you all later!

Canadian Roosters Keep Their Heritage!

Here’s an interesting story.

There is a place somewhere in the northern part of southern Ontario (and no, it is not called “mid Ontario” or something similar), where a Tim Hortons (the most popular cafe franchise in Canada) borders an animal farm. Every morning, same time, a rooster walks into the Tim Hortons. They feed him donuts and he leaves back home to the farm. Even more, he only likes particular kinds of donuts.

Just what you would expect from a Canadian rooster! :D

Source: my brother told me this story after he saw it on TV or somewhere else, I’m not too sure. If someone could point to the original story, that could be great!

92.5 Jack FM Toronto is history…

Yesterday, while cleaning around the house, I was listening to the radio, 92.5 Jack FM as always. It was Jeff and Carly show along with all sorts of great rock tunes, when — as usual — the 3 o’clock news came on, traffic. Then, all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, this monster comes on: some hip-hop music about ladies and all the rest.

I thought I accidentally switched to a different channel. I was wrong. It was 92.5 exactly.

My next thought was that Jeff and Carly decided to make a cruel joke. But after that song was finally through, another similar piece of overly exaggerated art immediately came on. My ears were bleeding heavily by then.

After a moment of confusion and puzzlement, my next thought was that supporters of Q107 decided to hack Jack FM and pull a trick of inserting noise into the radio band. And when I say `noise’, I really do consider (predominantely most) hip-hop songs simply noise. But after yet another few songs were emitted by my speakers, I figured that, if it was true, someone would already do something by now. [Note: I have nothing to do with hatred among Jack FM and Q107; I personally thing it is quite dumb, the whole thing; moreover, I enjoy both radio stations very much a lot.]

It seamed like a tiny bug slowly crawled through my ears into my brain, bit off a bunch of stuff on its way, laid a whole bunch of dynamite and it let it go off. It is certainly a traumatic experience.

Anyhow, later I have discovered the following note in many places around the net:

At 3pm on June 5, 2009 Rogers Communications announced that effective immediately Jack FM would be re-branded (back) to KISS 92.5. The new format is Top 40, and as a promotion the station will play 10,000 songs uninterrupted by commercials to pique interest and build listenership. The main reason of the change was because of the low ratings JACK-FM was getting in the Greater Toronto Area market.

Source: wikipedia

This is sad. This is more than just sad. This is beyond sad. This is preposterous!

Jack FM Toronto was my favourite radio station. I occasionally listen to Q107 and 102.5 The Edge, but Jack was always there, certainly. I was away in Edmonton until a few days ago, and guess what: I used Jack FM Listen Live every morning and every day. It was something I used to wake up to.

And now it’s gone! Like a doubly nilpotent matrix that was accidentally squared.

I am now looking at various other Jack FM stations, for example that in Vancouver and that in Chicago. I guess my radio is now located far away from where I live.

Sad…
Update [June 9, 2009, 16:00]: In the comments below, Charlene has kindly provided a link to an online petition to bring Jack back:

http://www.petitiononline.com/bbjack92/petition.html

Sign it, maybe it’ll help!

Photos from the Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games

Fergus Scottish Festival

Camp Oochigeas

My fiancee right now is volunteering at a camp for children with cancer, called Camp Oochigeas. All the kids are very small (4-8 years old), all of them are very fine, funny and great.

I am not going to say much, except a phrase that one child said that just makes you want to cry:

I don’t like drinking too much water, because if I do it tastes like those yellow pills they give us at the hospital.

If you were lately thinking of where to donate a few dollars, may be this is the right place.

Visit their web site: http://www.ooch.org/.

Russian and Georgian War

The Russia-Georgia War.

Answer me this: “Why can’t we live in peace together?” We, Russians and Georgians, both put our flag upon the Reichstag! This certainly must mean something!

And of course, everyone is telling a different story, as if both sides are talking about different events, not immediately connected. It is clear that Saakashvili is a good doll with strings pointing westward. But I am no political analyst, all that aside, can Russian government be that stupid to get into this war?..

I have a few Russian channels at home and in a summary form, here’s what is conveyed:

• There is genocide against Russian and South Ossetian people in the region
• Russian troops haven’t bombed a single civilian object. All the footages of bombed civilian sites are originated by Georgian troops themselves. To quote: “It is a very smart technique to destroy your own civilian object, make it look as if it’s been bombed by the opponent, blame it on the opponent, and complain about how a big and huge Russia attacks a small and week Georgia”.
• Russian citizens tried to leave Tbilisi, but the local police stopped them and restricted them to stay within the city.

What the Georgian government is saying you all know from the news. I have no information about it that would be conflicting with what’s conveyed by, say, BBC.

If you are curious about my personal opinion, then I really do not have much to tell you, except the fact that it is entirely sad that a bunch of gentlemen (if they can in fact be called so after these events) want to play toy soldiers.

I’ll try to update this post for any interesting or controversial information I might encounter.

As an arbitrator, who knows both Russian and English, and sees how the conflict is conveyed by the international media and the Russian media, I may suggest a few things:

• I recommend following BBC news (here), as they, to my mind, seem to be more or less objective and neutral.
• Check this blog for anything that is in conflict between what international and Russian news tell.
• I strongly do not recommend following CNN news, as their story is very flavoured with American position, which in turn is very-very subjective for understandable reasons…

Let’s sincerely hope this bloody madness…

Update: Russian troops are now moving into Senaki. Interestingly, both sides are calling for a ceasefire (Russians, according to Russian media, and Georgians, according to international media), but there isn’t any ceasefire.

Toronto Explosions

Toronto was rocked today by a series of explosions that took place around 4 o’clock in the morning in the north-central part of the city. Propane tanks in a propane depot started to blow one after the other. To make it clear: this is not a terrorist act.

Luckily, no one is hurt (as far as the news are at the moment). The entire perimeter is blocked and evacuated. That’s about 10,000 (ten thousand) people are forced out of their homes by Toronto Police and Fire departments. Major highways and streets are blocked (e.g. HWY401 between HWY400 and the Don Valley Parkway, Sheppard, Wilson, etc. see here). Some of the subway stations are also shut down (Downsview station, Wilson station and Yorkdale station). Poison control stuff is monitoring the area for lethal and poisonous gases, but everything is fine so far.

A terrifying video at YouTube, caught by one of the local residents: here.
The largest explosion is at 1:50 in the video.

I live in Eglinton and Islington area, which is quite a distance away from the ground zero (8-9 km away). I was working late last night and I heard the explosions very clearly. To my shame, I believed it was just thunder, although I did notice something strange about it. It was most probable that I head the large explosion at 1:50 in the video, because I did not hear a series of explosions, only a single one.

Update: It has now been about 14 or 15 hours since the evacuation took place. All the major roots are still closed. The HWY401 is no doubt the utmost important artery in Toronto, and it is closed. I had to drive around the city for a couple of reasons today, and boy may I just say: I can’t remember the traffic so bad since Moscow, where I used to live!

It took me 1 hour and 53 minutes to get from one end of the city to the other (that’s about 8km give or take). For comparison, it usually takes me about 15 minutes on a Sunday (using HWY401), about 30-40 minutes in heavy rush hour traffic (using HWY401). And even accounting for the fact that I had to use one of the avenues instead, I assume it would usually take about 30 minutes to do that without using HWY401 on a Sunday and may be an hour during rush hour.

That said, it is clear that the city is completely paralised. The commuter time is increased more than twice and that’s on a Sunday. I do not even want to start getting into estimates of what the situation would have been if it was a weekday…

Now the moral is: one again Torontonians are faced with a clear evidence of the fact that Toronto’s infrastructure, especially the public transit, are not even close to where they really should be! Disastrous traffic jams, all because citizens predominantly prefer personal automobiles to public transportation; at the other end, roads are in such bad condition (and I am not trying to mention the condition of the roads themselves, but rather the infrastructure induced by the roads) that once one piece falls out (like HWY401), everything goes to hell along with it.

The question of the public transportation is a very stubborn issue in Toronto. I do not blame Toronto for not having a decent transit system at the moment (I realise that the city took a huge step in growth far ahead of the transportation system, in addition to some other factors), but I do blame the City Hall for not taking any immediate action on the matter. I should post a separate blog post on this issue, since I think I might have a lot to say.

Update: A lot more information, pictures and videos can be found here, in another blog.

Update: Unfortunately, sad news. A 25-year veteran of Toronto Fire died at the scene today. Many condolences to the family, friends and colleagues. Great service will not be forgotten.

Happy Canada Day!

Today, Canada has been celebrating its 141st year after birth!

Finally has our house, too, put up a large red leaf flag outdoors — after more than four years in Canada, it seems that we finally are showing off this fact. I do not like the place where our flag stands — it seems to be invisible from a large portion of viewing angles; but in any case it is better than nothing.

This year, Liana and I decided to go to Canada’s Wonderland to view the fireworks. Frankly, I expected something much more sophisticated from such a large and expensive place as Wonderland. I mean they were nice, loud and colourful; but I found that, for example, the fireworks at Mel Lastman square (the admission to which is free, by the way) are quite a lot more exciting. Wonderland tried to have that cracking in tact with music, but honestly miserably failed; the fireworks weren’t somehow directed at the central square, where most of the people were.

The most interesting part was the “getting outta there” after the show ended. There were a few thousand people (id est, a few thousand cars) at the park for the show; all this crowd tried to leave the park at the same time. It took us 1.5 hours to get out of the parking lot!

Anyway, it was still a pleasant evening.

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Save our CBC Radio Orchestra

Just recently my very good friend (Eugene) has brought to my attention the CBC radio station. The radio station has a very interesting repertoire, raging from the classical music to some pleasant blues.

To make a long story short, CBC is trying to cut classical music on air by some 10 times. The details are in this facebook goup.

Update: Here’s a video of Eugene speaking at the strike against this disastrous closure: here.