No, this isn’t me in that tree… I started the ground school portion today — 45 hours of classroom theory before I get behind the yoke. This is an article about a little aviation mishap in the States (the pilot was unhurt, apparently):

Neatorama: Plane Crashed Next to Flight School Sign!

Thanks to Sue for sending me the Neatorama article! Here’s the Snopes article as referenced in the photo and in Neatorama.

Ground School, Part I

I wanted to start ground school last month when I registered for my private pilot’s training, but the weather conspired against me!

Brampton Flight Centre is an hour away, and when I tried to join the Saturday class intake several weeks ago it snowed and I had no interest in driving through a whitewash. I could do the classes out of order (except for meteorology and navigation), but I preferred not to mix the classes up or skip orientation. So I waited until this month’s intake on a day that I could attend, and it happened to be Wednesday. There are four rotations of ground school per month, and each class is three hours, from 7:00-10:00pm except for today, which began at 6:00 to include an orientation. I had to leave work early, jump in a cab and race home, fetch the car from my parking stall and get on the Gardiner Expressway before the rush hour traffic locked me in. I made it exactly on time, which means theoretically I should be able to leave work on time, take transit home, get the car and make it for 7:00pm. I’ll find out in a week! It means full days on Wednesdays and more driving than I like to do during the week (that would be ANY) for 15 weeks in a row, but I’m looking forward to this part of my training. It’s just the commuting I’m not thrilled about, but I can live with it.

I thought I might be in a small minority of females taking flight training, and yes, there was only one other there besides me. I’ll see more as time goes by, I’m sure. The classroom is a good size but there were maybe 20 or so students at this first session; apparently February is the slowest month for ground school. I wanted to begin now because by the time I finish the classes the weather will be good for flying and I won’t want to be stuck in a classroom then. 15 weeks will take me to around the middle of May, and the days will be longer — which means more flight time. This is the best time to start ground school, in my opinion. I just have to get over my dislike for winter driving.

The other consideration is that right now I’m in the cheapest portion of flight instruction. Once ground schooling is finished, the next stage is about $200 an HOUR, and I’m going to need these months to save up the money for instruction and plane rental. It kills me to think I gave away David’s flight bag (headsets and all) and the plane was sold, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Gigi’s Papa thinks I should buy a DSLR (digital single reflex camera) to take my photography hobby one step further, but I told him I can’t afford a camera AND flight training — for this year, my goal is to work toward the license. Once I have the license, I’ll think about a DSLR again. After all, I can’t fly the plane AND take aerials, right?

Click here to read the comments on the screenshot above in Flickr.

Technorati tags: flying, Neatorama, aviation, article, screenshot

Eric in the pilot’s seat of the Skyhawk we rented on December 21 to go flying in David’s memory. I’m editing the videoclip right now.

The plan is for me to be in the pilot’s seat later this year: on Tuesday I begin ground school, classroom theory for flight training to obtain my private pilot’s license. I joined the Brampton Flying Club today because membership is required when enrolled in their flight school — the club owns the property, facilities, and planes.

How quickly I can get my PPL depends on time and money. Ground school is 45 hours, and I’ll attend on the weeknights when I can make it, and the rest on Saturdays. To make it to a 7 o’clock class on weeknights requires hoofing it home from work, picking up the car and driving west and north with the rest of the commuter traffic… not exactly my cup of tea. We’ll see how it goes, but I have a feeling I’ll stick to Saturdays.

But at least I’m one step closer to getting into the pilot’s seat!

Technorati tags: Pennsylvania, flying, flight training

In my flight research of the past day, I’ve noticed that January is my typical month to blitz my list of travel sites. As in years past, I look to April for my Great Escape — that precious term break between Winter and Summer semesters at university. Most people search for flights in January to get away from winter and head south to warmer climes, but for me it’s my ticket to sweet sanity, something to look forward to when I’m hunched over my keyboard, finishing papers, or trying to get through reading material that will evaporate from my brain the instant I write the exam. When deadlines loom, I find comfort in the Easyjet or Ryanair flight I’ve booked to Italy or Paris or Barcelona or Dublin, and start counting down the days. I try and maximise my time off, too, usually scheduling the flight to London (I fly the discount carriers around Europe, it’s cheaper) the day after my last exam, and returning right before I’m due back at work. It’s hairy scheduling that would put most people off, but I thrive on that way of travel.

This is the first January in three years where I am not restricted by exam dates, and it’s not a Great Escape from academic life. I’m not going to Europe this April, either; I’m honeymooning there in October. Nope, I’m going to… the Philippines.

How long has it been since I’ve been to the motherland? June 1984, so that would be nearly 21 years. Why haven’t I gone since then? Oh, many, many reasons. But everyone is getting older, not just me, and my father has buried a few of his many siblings recently. The matriarch of the family, Auntie Jane, passed away one year ago today, in her mid-80s. For every reason why I don’t go, there are mounting reasons to go. Now that I’m on a short hiatus from university, and I’m self-employed, there are fewer barriers, and it’s a good a time to go as any. My father is, understandably, very pleased to hear this. His family is enormous, and I have more cousins than I can keep track of — only a few of the siblings moved to North America, and the rest are in the Philippines. I’d promised him the year before that I would go in April 2005, and last month it was doubtful I would go because of wedding costs, but after some thought I decided the time has come to finally visit. No more excuses. I’m planning to go for at least four weeks.

Older photos of the Edwin family

I plugged in some options for my flight, hoping that I could maybe purchase the difference in Aeroplan miles, but it looks like Air Canada — surprise surprise — upped its mileage requirement for Asia to 95,000 from 90,000. Currently, I have about 65,000, but at 4c per Aeroplan mile it would be the same price to buy the difference than it would be to buy the ticket outright and keep the mileage.

My options:

1) JFK to Manila with China Airlines, for about CAD 1,200
2) fly to Vancouver, then YVR to Manila with Philippine Airlines, for about CAD 1,200
3) look for deals from San Francisco, LA, or Seattle, pending cheap flight from New York or Pennsylvania.

So far, option #1 is the best deal. It’s a long flight — 20+ hours there, via Anchorage and Tapei, and 24+ hours return — and I will finally break my longstanding record of not exceeding $1,000 for an air ticket. For all the flights I’ve done, this is no mean feat, since my average flight has been around 10 hours. L.A. to Sydney is still my non-stop record: 12.5 hours across the Pacific Ocean. Vancouver to Amsterdam is about 11, Auckland to Singapore was 9, Bangkok to London took stinking forever (thanks Balkan Airlines!), and even Vancouver to London is around 9.5 hours. Until I started dating someone in Calgary in 2003, I hadn’t even flown domestically — all my flights were either due south (San Francisco, L.A., Las Vegas, San Diego, Mexico) or southeast (Chicago, New York) within North America. I fly cheap, too, I’ve always managed to get pretty good deals on flights, so I’m hoping this won’t be any different. I tried earlier to find a deal down the coast, but nothing I could find for SFO or LAX or SEA could beat the fare from YVR. I’m going to have to keep searching if I want to keep my under-a-grand record intact.

In more encouraging news, I found a cheap Tango (Air Canada) non-stop flight from Vancouver to JFK for $159 one-way. There are no restrictions for this fare that I can see, and David’s immigration lawyer says my 90-day limit to stay in the U.S. as a Canadian should pose no hindrance to me at the border. (He’s American, though, it’s not like he’s ever had to face U.S. Customs during harsh questioning.) I might just take the Tango fare, as it has a $30 fee for unlimited changes, as opposed to the $75+tax change fee imposed by Cathay Pacific and payable only at the airport. Also, with that YVR-JFK Cathay Pacific flight, I have a one-month maximum stay rule, which is why I returned to Vancouver Dec 13 (I flew Nov 13, and we had to let the mid-December Delta flight that David purchased for me go by the wayside).

David’s corresponding entry in Multiply: The China Clippers

I’ve been in absentia here for nearly a week, but rest assured, I am still alive. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, or that I haven’t done anything… it’s actually completely the opposite, only there just aren’t enough hours in a day to, ehm, write about the day!

I pulled a couple of all-nighters this week, though. Had to, to finish a paper. Tonight will be the same. The office is packed up in Sechelt, and will move to Gibsons in a matter of hours. What fun I am missing… tomorrow night is my final exam, and then an obscene amount of (office) work after I return from said exam that finishes at 10pm. Which means another all-nighter. I’ll sleep on the flight to Toronto, for sure, then a groggy transfer at Pearson for the transatlantic flight to London. Where I will meet Steve at the pub near my regular haunt in South Kensington — let the fun begin!

I’ve been holed up in my apartment for days (read: academic imprisonment), and today I have a day pass to do a KAZILLION things, only to find that the outside world is a circus. I’ll get into it later, when I break free of Orkut jail and academic prison. Wish me luck. Send me a nail file.

I’d starve. My editor would HATE me.

OK, enough fooling around. Write!

Either:

a) I’m an OK writer who could be better not with instruction, but a cattle prod
b) I’m a decent writer who is held back by an inability to write without extreme pressure or threat to life and limb
c) I’m a terrible writer with flashes of mediocrity—->delusions of grandeur in irregular cycles
d) I’m sick and tired of school and need a holiday.

I’ll take d), because that’s the only one I know for sure. I have a theory for why, for the first time in 2.5 years, I am only taking one SFU course but feel less energized than other terms when I have three on the go at the same time: I didn’t go anywhere at Christmas break. I always go on a trip somewhere to re-set my brain, and in December I stayed put… well, you all know why.

*NEWSFLASH*! There is a God. I’m going to have a live-in chef. An Aussie houseboy. (ha ha — just kidding, Matt)

Matt’s coming back to Vancouver. He’ll be staying in my apartment part of the time I’ll be in Europe, and for about 10 days after I return and before he returns to Australia, he will be at my beck and call… I’m telling you, he promised me laksa way back in December, and he has the nerve to be “flat out livin’ the dream”, he says, riding his snowboard all day in Whistler and working all night… first that Aussie bloke Steve hitches all the way up to Alaska with my apartment keys in his pocket, now this Matt guy takes four months (it’ll be five once he actually does it) to make good on his promise of laksa. What’s with these Aussie guys, anyway??? I’ll see Steve in a few weeks in London, but he’s probably breathing a sigh of relief that this time I won’t be making any toxic homemade sangria that renders one unconsconscious after an hour…

I can’t believe it. A weekend without a deadline hanging over my head. It’s been so long I’m forgetting what it’s like! Lately, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. As much as I moan on this blogsite about how much there is to get done, it’s just all hot air, really. Deep down I know if I didn’t have stuff going on, I would wither up and die with boredom. If I didn’t channel this energy into something constructive and productive, I’d probably end up in jail for mischief…

The weather’s been so good lately, I’m looking forward to doing stuff outside. When Ross called from Boston on Monday, he said it was snowing. I took this pic this afternoon, and as you can see, the blossoms are out in full force on Beach Avenue.

What I have slotted for this weekend, work-wise, is:

1) finally finish off my taxes so I can get my refund!
2) attend Anglican Church to collect data for my ethnography paper about religious rhetoric.

In case there are any Anglicans reading this, I’d just like to say that I have never been to Anglican Church, and that my use of the word rhetoric is not in the pejorative sense. I’m taking Advanced University writing, so the entire field is referred to as rhetoric studies. Just thought I’d clear that up. Why did I choose the Anglican Church?

a) there are several in the West End and around the downtown core
b) if I attend my brother’s church (the one I grew up with), I would be less objective, and it would mean waking up early on a Saturday; somehow, this seems harder after a tough week — I need to break myself into the weekend!
c) the Anglican Church is an old church, and one of my objectives is to examine the modernization of religious messages. The reason why I didn’t choose Catholic is because it’s more of an inherited religion — people will more likely identify themselves as Catholic if their parents were Catholic, even if they were non-practicing. There seems somewhat less of a need to modernize Catholicism, although this is more my impression rather than a statement of fact and I’m certain that there are Catholics out there who would argue this. In any case, I chose Anglican because although it is an old church, it has adopted some (relative to Catholic) progressive policies (ordination of women as ministers, gay marriage) and appears to position itself as attempting to be more relevant to its constituents. I understand that within the Anglican Church there are different levels of conservatism/liberalism, but I chose to study a church in an urban setting as it would seem to address relevancy to a modern way of life more than a suburban or rural church.

Fun Fair at Kits Point??

I returned from Sechelt late on Wednesday night, and found it oddly bright outside. Where was all this light coming from?? My office/bedroom was flooded with light, and there were massive stadium-sized lights on the beach by my apartment, across the water at Kits Point. I’ve just done a Google search, and according to Katkam, it’s just a film set. I was wondering why there was no advertising, no press junkets, no information whatsoever. Vancouver, as a location for all kinds of filming — feature films, commercials, made for TV movies, etc. — can transform itself in a matter of hours. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve unintentionally walked or driven through a film set over the years. It’s bizarre, but interesting, to observe the transformation. One minute you’re standing on a city streetcorner, and the next block over is New York City, complete with NY shops, cars with NY plates, cafes and NYC police.

Dining Out For Life

Eliza and I had much more fun this year working Dining Out For Life. Last year it was pissing down with rain, there was a hockey game (in Vancouver that does tend to keep people indoors), and the restaurants we had assigned to us were all over the city — Kitsilano, Main Street, downtown. Some restaurants closed early, one didn’t even know why I was there, and the rest all mentioned at some point or another that it was a pretty slow night. This year, the weather was good, people were dining out, and there was no hockey game going on. Everyone was in good spirits, I never had to wait long to get the boxes, and I’m very certain we made a lot more money than last year and hopefully beat the total raised from two years ago.

What Eliza and I had to do was pick up the donation boxes that were placed at each of the participating restaurants. There were about 150 in total, but we were assigned about 10. In some places, people found us a pretty curious sight: me with a name tag, running in and grabbing a box, then running out again to jump into a canary yellow Mercedes SLK. Kam, of Kam’s Place Singaporean restaurant, joked that he would only give me the box as a trade for the car. Driving around in a yellow sports car is like putting wheels on a neon sign!

Project Empty Bowl

While we were out driving around, I asked Eliza to cruise by the Virgin Megastore window so I could take photos of the display. I alluded to a debacle on Tuesday, the day of the installation. It all got sorted out in the end, but let me just say this is the second display. The first was dismantled. I only learned about this yesterday, and I was mortified and apologized to the Virgin Megastore marketing and promo manager by e-mail. That is the last time I will let something I’m responsible for go unsupervised (unless I know the people involved first-hand). This is generally my policy, but as I had to be in Sechelt — ironically, so I could work the other A Loving Spoonful project — Dining Out For Life on Thursday, I couldn’t be around to be involved in the installation at Virgin. Karen played it down, but personally, I was embarrassed.

The bowls on display at Virgin are the largest and most flamboyant of all the bowls created for Project Empty Bowl. Because the windows at Virgin are so large, the posters created for them were special ordered and — I’m sure — very expensive. Karen picked out the “loudest” bowls to showcase there, and the pics I took below are two very ornate pieces that we were hoping to display at Holt Renfrew. I’m going to go there sometime over the next few days to take photos and see what they’ve done with the displays.

Came across this from reading a post on Roland Tanglao’s blog about neurologist Alice Flaherty’s book titled The Midnight Disease. It discusses hypergraphia — the burning need to write — and writer’s block. Interestingly, she says in her press release interview with her publisher:

“As for examples of writer’s block, the strange thing is how paradoxically eloquent many writers are in describing their block. Because a block is often very genre-specific, as anyone knows who has felt blocked on a big paper and has procrastinated by writing long e-mails. Coleridge is a perfect example of that — he used to churn out metaphysical treatises when what he really wanted to do was write poetry. The recent movie Adaptation demonstrates a trick many writers use in that situation, which is to escape your block by writing about it. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth did that.”

I *wish* I suffered from hypergraphia, and not from writer’s block. It took me f**ing forever to get that first assignment done!! I pulled 3 nearly-all-nighters just to get it completed, when it really should’ve taken just one.

I ended up getting a lot of things done eventually, but had to jump through mega-hoops today…

* postponed calling the accountant, who rang on Saturday looking to get some stuff done early; haven’t even done any tax stuff yet, and normally I do it as soon as my last December salary form is ready!

* discovered that a cheque I’d written for my mother was from a chequebook with an old account number, so therefore did not exist! Nothing like a bit of raw panic at the bank… wouldn’t have figured this out except I was wiring money off to U.K. and gave the bank teller the chequebook to reference the number � he pauses and says, “umm, this number doesn’t match the one I have on the screen…” YIKES!!

* had to pick up my course materials at SFU, but forgot my book so tried to stay awake on the Skytrain with only coffee to prop me up

Of course, it gets worse, but I’ll spare the gory details for now. I’m still getting past the gory details.

Yesterday:

Felt totally inhuman yesterday. Too many all-nighters. I’m over 30 now, so maybe I shouldn’t be expecting my body to handle this kind of schedule without a lot of resistance. [It's not like I'm trying to make some kind of Guinness World Book record... I'm not doing this because I want to!] Fell asleep on the floor last night trying to speed-read. But, I managed to write the psych exam yesterday along with Kinesiology students at noon, got it over with, and felt some relief riding home.

Got call from Cheryl that her appointment at BC Women’s was finished, so I phoned CAN while I was on transit to see if I could locate a car anywhere close by. It was already 3pm, and rush hour traffic had begun. Cars available for the rest of the evening were hard to come by, but the guy did manage to find a brand-new car at Cambie & 17th, not too far away from BC Women’s Hospital, so I got off the bus to see if I could catch a Cambie Street bus…

Eliza phoned me at the same time to mention the BC Ferries were on full (illegal) strike, because we were supposed to go to the office today. Fortunately (for me) the strike was on, so I didn’t have to go in. Eliza was near downtown, so she kindly gave me a lift to the CAN car, and I hopped in and drove to the hospital to pick up Cheryl, who accompanied me to Surrey Memorial Hospital to see my mum. She was heavily sedated, but I tried to impress upon her how important this meeting is with the lawyer tomorrow.

After taking Cheryl home, Allan arrived soon after, so we fed the kids and I sent them off for a quick errand while I bathed the kiddies. This girl named Tammy showed up at the door, and I very nearly didn’t recognize her… we went to the same high school. Apparently she’s helping them do laundry… I invited her to stick around until they came back. Told her the good news — that Cheryl had a very positive set of results from the ultrasound, and if her appointment on Dec 24 goes well, she won’t have to be admitted to hospital until maybe January. Which is great news since being confined to hospital in Vancouver meant she wouldn’t be able to see Allan or the kids until the weekends. The only person living anywhere near BC Women’s Hospital is me, and I told Cheryl she would be totally sick of seeing me after the first month!

Both babies are alive and growing, and exceeding the expectations of the doctors at BCWH. The twins are already named: Meagan Joy and Maribeth (Mary-Beth?) Jolie. This is in keeping with the initials of the other three kids: Melissa Jean, Michael James, and Madeleine Jane. [Eliza thinks since I'm the hands-on auntie that I should have a namesake, too! I told her my chances would be better if my name started with the letter M.]

Today:

Today I spoke to another lawyer (a longtime friend of my “new cousin-in-law” Mike) who gave me some free counsel on my current situation. I was, just before, speaking to the lawyer I retained on my mother’s behalf, and he’d asked me to contact the ICBC rep who told me about the witnesses… at that time, I’d only been able to leave a voicemail, but she did phone back this afternoon, and we had a lengthy conversation… there was no tone of hostility, and I never mentioned lawyers or gave her the impression anyone but myself was dealing with the claim, but I did ask her a lot of questions to which she was reticent to answer. I figured that might happen. The Insurance Corporation of BC is, at bottom, an insurance company whose mandate is NOT to pay you unless they absolutely have to. My lawyer says he’s been working on ICBC cases for 20 years, and I could tell from the tone in his voice how he felt about them.

This is all getting increasingly complicated, and from time to time I feel like I’m getting in over my head. But as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… it’s been a rather steep learning curve, since I’ve never been injured or in a collision with another car (I’ve only hit deer and barriers on the I-5 during snowstorms!), so my knowledge of hospitals and lawyers and government benefits and insurance companies and other red-tape systems has suddenly climbed exponentially. If I ever get into an accident, I will be MUCH more prepared than I was before I embarked on any of this.

A little advice for anyone reading this post:

Make sure you fill out the Emergency Contacts section of your daytimer or anything else you carry around with you. If you live alone, this is especially important (yeah, this includes me), and it shouldn’t be a person who is likely to be in a vehicle with you… No one will know you’ve been in accident until you are missed from work or an appointment. If it’s the weekend, it may be a long time before your situation is made known to the people important to you.