Early morning trip to the gym, followed by a flying visit to drop off library books, and then off to work...After work, I went to the Canadian Embassy for a lecture about Diversity in Canadian Culture. There were three lecturing profs, one of which was from York, which was funny/ironic, one from Waterloo, and one a foreigner who is a visiting prof at Tokyo U (not sure where he was from).

They all had handouts and well-organized descriptions and stuff, it felt like being back in the first day of lecture! Apparently, the mention of the Prof before their names brought out the note-taking brown noser in me, as my handouts are covered in notes about the symbolic meaning of the lyrics of Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen (Grampa, you would have liked that part!)

It was interesting, though not as useful for my upcoming Weekender article as I was hoping it might be. Nevertheless, there were definitely some good points made, although it did re enforce my idea that those of us who grew up on the winter-free west coast really miss out on a critical aspect of being Canadian-that wicked winter! Does my winter in TO count? Probably not, but at least it's a bit of a start in understanding what everyone from the east spends the winters whinging about!

Interesting fact as well-Canada's population make-up (in terms of ethnic background) mimics the population distribution of the entire world. That's cool in a microcosm-ish way!

Also interesting from today, but not at all related to the lecture - www.startforce.jp, a service (in English, once you sign up), which is a Web 2.0 application billed as a 'virtual desktop'. It all runs in your browser, looks like a windows OS, but is self-contained and specifically written, and includes applications such as 'writer' for uploading and editing word documents on various computers. I haven't quite worked out its full potential yet, but it seems pretty good.

Now, I'm going to bed, so go listen to a grumpy old man sing about Suzanne, or check out start force...either one!

xo
D