Monthly Archive

Background: Metro Vancouver Transit Fares

I just came back from a Toastmasters meeting in which I evaluated a speech that supported the fare increase. It was a battle just to stay objective. Speaking with the speaker afterward, it turned out that he doesn’t like the increase either, but he made some persuasive arguments nevertheless.

Well, it’s been two months since the increase, and the former GVTA still has to fight the accusations of the highest fares in the country. OK, so the $2.50 is still lower than Ottawa’s $3.00 or Montreal’s $2.75. I guess the $5.00 three-zone fare that the MSM picked up most often led to that line of thinking.

I’m more concerned with the 80-km commute comparison. It is not fair to compare the Toronto and Montreal examples with the trip from Langley, because I’m guessing the Toronto and Montreal trips shown are by commuter rail. And AMT doesn’t go to Repentigny, yet (wiki). Knowing that, and using West Coast Express from Maple Ridge instead, these are what I looked up:

• GO Transit, Aurora to Toronto-Union: $12.30 return
• WCE, Maple Meadows to Vancouver-Waterfront: $15.50 return
• AMT, Mont-St-Hilaire to Montréal-Centrale: $16.00 return

At least now an orange is an orange is an orange. The bottom line: transit fares are high everywhere, whether you take conventional bus or commuter rail.

Aside: I dropped in at West Point Grey Community Centre earlier this week to see Coast Mountain’s proposals for two new routes. The first one, #33, will travel between 29th Avenue Station and UBC via East 33rd and West 16th Avenues (see map). I’ve known this one for a while, and there’s no change. The second one is a new shuttle, the C19, between UBC and Broadway/Alma via NW Marine. This would probably be popular in the summer, seeing as it serves Spanish Banks and Jericho, but I believe it won’t be implemented until September 2008 at the earliest, so there’s a missed opportunity to test this route.

AMT photo: mystery..110@flickr
WCE photo: Stephen Rees@flickr
GO Train photo: gbalogh@flickr

Stupid Oscars. I was never intending to watch it, but just like every year, I get suckered in and I watch it to the unsurprising end. As a result, I missed an opportunity to watch the last four hours of Pride and Prejudice (1995): the first two (via PVR) and the last two “live” on my PBS station. That was tossed out the window, and now it became a bits-and-pieces viewing that involved PVRing the final part as well, and which had to be finished Monday night.

Never mind, it’s finished. Having gone through it from beginning to end for the first time, it’s clear to me that P&P95 set the bar, and set it high, for any subsequent Austen adaptation. The fact it went almost six hours gave the producers the opportunity to explore certain things in depth and detail. Example from part 3: Darcy scouring the depths of London in search of Wickham and Lydia. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Austen spent a lot of pages describing Darcy’s quest.

I was particularly struck with the delivery of lines in this adaptation. It seemed to me that every syllable was thought through before it was spoken out loud. Combined with the oh-so-Austen style of dialogue that is very striking in P&P, it seemed to enhance the viewing experience. This is likely the adaptation I would re-watch (if I ever get around to seeing it again in my own time!). 9/10

Going back through my computer files, I opened a short essay I had to write for a class in early modern Britain, in which we had to determine how well Austen described 18th-century English society in P&P. Reading what I’ve typed almost ten years ago, which is surreal in itself, I was surprised at how well I thought I picked up the societal implications of marrying outside of one’s social class, as well as the effect of primogeniture on the Bennet girls’ chances at financial independence on marriage, if they ever did so. I don’t remember the grade I received for this paper, but it looks like I might have done OK.

So, five down, two to go. After a so-so start to Austen City Limits, I think it’s improving. The next scheduled adaptation is not until March 23, with Kate Beckinsale as Emma. I might fill in the void with postings on my viewings of other films in the Austen canon. Jane Austen Book Club should be one of them, Clueless could be another.

(Note to self: try to find the code to insert extra white space between paragraphs.)

I’ve always been suspicious of Valentine’s Day and its attendant Hallmark-ization: from sappy cards to overpriced flowers, it all seems excessive. I’m no cynic, but everyday should be Valentine’s Day, and not just to your spouse/partner/significant other, but showing everyone near and dear to you how much you care about them.

(Not) coincidentally, February 14 is also a day of celebration for those who identify themselves as quirkyalones. I caught on to the word, and the concept, in 2004, just after Sasha Cagen published her “Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics”. Cagen’s original essay, which dates back to 2000, sums up quirkyaloneness rather well. When I read that for the first time, I was struck at how well her description of quirkyalone matches my state of mind about relationships. For me, one paragraph stands out, and it’s so poignant that I’ve re-printed the last line on a Post-it on my desk:

For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. We want a miracle. Out of millions, we have to find the one who will understand.

I would describe my single-ness as being 70% by choice, 30% by circumstance. It’s something I’ve long accepted, despite the frustration that pops up from time to time, and if that “miracle” never happens, then c’est la vie. On this Feb 14, therefore, I’ll just go about my day, celebrating not just quirkyaloneness but the independent spirit attached to it.

Happy International Quirkyalone Day!

Quiz - How quirkyalone are you?

(IQD graphic from quirkyalone.net)

Moving sucks. It sucks so much time from you that it’s just draining. There’s too much to do, so little time, and that includes blog posts. At least there’s the magic of the PVR.

At the moment, I’m typing and watching the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It’ll be over three weeks, and I’ll wait until the end to compile thoughts about it. Given that this is almost six hours long, the four previous entries in this Austen season pale in comparison in terms of plot and pacing. Even at 90 minutes or so, these films were still subject to editing, which leads me to two posts on AustenBlog:

A public service announcement of the Janeite Broadcasting Network
PBS responds

The uproar from more ardent Austen fans revolves around the slight edits of what are already condensed adaptations (if the Editrix at AustenBlog is right, the deleted scenes between the original UK airings and the Masterpiece versions are nothing to write home about), and that the DVD releases for Region 1 are not even the uncut, UK versions!

I’ve already mentioned in my post-Mansfield post that a certain plot point from the novel has been removed in that film. The lengths used here certainly weaken the stories (and any search will show the criticism to the lengths of these adaptations). Again, AustenBlog’s editrix says it best: “One of the selling points of the ITV “Jane Austen Season” was that “each generation deserves its own Jane Austen adaptations.” Too bad this generation gets the short-attention-span versions.” When this Pride and Prejudice is concluded, the difference will be like night and day.

And going through the first hour of P&P, I can add to my Austen-Doctor Who connection: Christopher Benjamin as Sir William Lucas and as the excellent Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

I’ll admit right now that I have little knowledge of the biographical Jane Austen during the period covered in Miss Austen Regrets (mainly 1814-1816), but I do know of the letter burning performed by sister Cassandra after her death. I also admit not to have seen last year’s Becoming Jane, which, by all accounts, sensationalized certain aspects of Austen’s love life.

So, going in with no predispositions or expectations of any sort, I came away impressed with Miss Austen Regrets. It was well-written, well-directed, and well-acted. Well, it certainly was a refreshing change to the more predictable adaptations we’ve seen so far in Masterpiece’s Austen season.

A big heap of commendation should go to Olivia Williams as Miss Austen: she certainly ran the gamut in this film, from the flirty to the morose. With that range and how Williams portrayed her, there is the possibility that Miss Austen was masking her inner turmoil from the “regret” with the bubbly personality that would otherwise seem natural. (I for one found it amusing Miss Austen writing to Cassandra about the social drinking and the hangover that results the next morning!) Now that I think about it some more, the Jekyll-and-Hyde persona of Miss Austen is almost mirrored in the film’s pace and mood (the lighting in particular seems to reflect this).

That second half, in which Miss Austen was more moody and combative, was far more interesting, not least for the dynamic between her and Cassandra. The scene in which she confides in Cass, unknown to either that niece Fanny was watching, was heartbreaking. The suggestion made in Regrets that Cassandra “persuaded” Miss Austen from breaking off at least one engagement evidently mirrors Lady Russell and Anne Elliot in Persuasion. I suspect screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes inserted other attributes of Miss Austen’s heroines and attributed them to the author herself. There could definitely be a whole film dedicated to the relationship between the Austen sisters; the plotline shown here probably is scratching the surface.

Miss Austen Regrets has much to recommend itself, and should be a highlight of Jane Austen City Limits. 9/10

Photo credit: PBS/Masterpiece

I’ve done three weeks so far, and these are the distances I’ve logged:

• Week 1: 3 runs, 10.62 km (longest: 5.02)
• Week 2: 3 runs, 14.06 km (longest: 7.73)
• Week 3: 1 run, 10.76 km

The 10.76 happened on Saturday, the day I scheduled my long runs. After neglecting my other two scheduled runs this week (combination of bad weather, overtime, moving, and sheer fatigue), I was determined to squeeze in the long run in between bouts of packing. It was a crisp, cool, sunny afternoon run: perfect winter conditions. I deliberately kept it slow and steady, considering this was my first run in a week. Plotting the map and feeding the numbers into a spreadsheet afterward, I was pretty pleased with my run today. Yes, that’s what happens when an accountant takes up running: you gotta have Excel analyze the minutiae and see if your run speed is trending up or down. Never mind: it only gets tougher, and I still have to put in hills and speedwork, so back to the pavement on Tuesday.

CBC: Sarah McLachlan brings power of music to Vancouver schools

I also saw the cover of Thursday’s 24 Hours. Later that day, I was popping in some old VHS tapes I uncovered while preparing for my move, and I re-discovered Sarah McLachlan’s Intimate and Interactive session at Much in 1997, just before she released Surfacing (wiki). Going through bits of that I&I again, and the Spotlight of videos I recorded after that, I realized how you could not be enchanted by Sarah McLachlan, especially in the kind of setting you seldom see at Much nowadays. Couldn’t find any YouTube of the I&I, but I loved this video when it came out:

Going back to my original links, it’s also nice to see that Sarah is still active in the community, not just through MusiCan, which was involved in this week’s performance, but through her own musical outreach. And the school where she performed was so close to where I’m living!