Leaving Vancouver

The Boing 747 takes off. We are about 11/2 hour late. Behind me a little boy from India, so excited, he doesn’t stop kicking in my back, in front, a women who seems nearly hysterically annoyed by the flight, and puts immediately her seat back. I squeezed in the middle. But the lights are off, and first we turn west. Below the Pacific, a boat, and the full moon reflecting. In the east, all the lights of Vancouver. No pictures, it was too beautiful.

I liked Vancouver; life looks human in this place. Yes, it rained a lot but upon arrival at the airport you can get equipped. Have you ever seen another place with an umbrella vending machine? Unfair to say this on such a sunny day. There are other specialties in Vancouver. Taxis can have all kind of colors, even green.

Compared to the US, there are much less franchised shops, even fruit and vegetables stores or butchers! I liked very much the apartment buildings, they have a lot of glass and windows and apartments must be nice and full of light. There are also parts of town, which are less shiny.

One thing: it is hard to find a decent postcard of Vancouver! I could finally decide on one, but wrote only one sentence and it is still in my handbag. Sorry Tobi!

I liked the Simon Fraser University on the top of the Burnaby Mountain. The view is beautiful. People at the workshop talked about the ugliness of the campus with the same tone as when they talk about our campus. However this one is smaller, and it seems that there is a community life, that I never found on a French campus: students make their journal and the campus radio. Naturally there is a gay association, one for vegans etc. And their canteen is worse than ours – a thing to take all complexes about ours from me!

Concerning the content of the D0-workshop, I am little less enthusiastic. Actually, I presonnaly prefer regular collaboration meetings, where current work is presented. The themes of the workshops are not always prepared in connection with the normal working groups. Speakers express more or less their general ideas about the subject and the follow up is rather uncertain. My preference would be to treat workshop themes for 2 days, and then have a “normal” collaboration type meeting the following days. I think we have a discussion on this every year inside the collaboration, and the majority of collaborators doesn't share this opinion. Hopefully I don't offense anyone, to my opinion the program committee had a hard job to deal with rather difficult subjects.   

And I think someone didn’t get thanked enough: Dugan O’Neil! Hey Dugan, you organized the workshop in a way that certainly everyone felt very warmly received and appreciated all the efforts made for this to be the case by everyone participating in the organisation! I will not forget the simplicity to get a FedEx sended to Paris, and it even arrived!

(PS: and thanks to Horst and Zhiyi for all their pictures)

Comments

[manuel visaya]

the picture of the mountains reminded me of an underwater scene from recent memory. the parking lot, just the same, except it is massive, darker, full and from a distance one could discern very faint light from a distance as these emerge...

[Gordon T Watts]

I agree, Dugan didn't get enough thanks! He lead a fantastic team!

[m.visaya]

time will tell, sabina. (apr-372)

[m.visaya]

a@0.61? (D5.BCC)