orichalcum

I spent the weekend in Vancouver, going to an academic conference and hanging out with retsuko, which was immense amounts of fun. Since the conference is a little dense to discuss here, and most of my conversations with retsuko are not for public viewing, I'll write about my impressions of Vancouver itself.

Canada feels like America, but about 10 degrees to the left. The money is just slightly different, as are the accents and people and stores. One mildly unexpected but cool thing was the emphasis on First Nations people; before several speeches at the conference, forgiveness was asked for being on occupied land, and the gorgeous if expensive airport (8$ "airport maintenance fee"!) had tons of gorgeous First Nations artwork.

In terms of noting things about the trip itself, I was unnerved by the new U.S. security measures, and the Cathay Pacific flight crew (wonderful airline, incidentally) was clearly unthrilled as well, given announcements like: "The Americans have requested us to tell you not to congregate in groups on the plane," and "The Americans have instructed us that you are not allowed to use mobile phones until you have passed entirely through Customs." On my plane, there was a group of young observant Jewish men who spent much of the trip praying together in the back of the plane, in a small standing group. I couldn't help but wonder if they would have been stopped if they'd been Muslim.

Vancouver's got ridiculous amounts of pretty landscape, between the ocean and the snow-covered mountains, and a very nice shopping area. I got lots of nice soaps at Lush (thanks for the rec, myrt_maat), including a perfect present for a friend who's getting married this summer, a whole bunch of Bronze Age miniatures for my campaign, some new used books, the Rurouni Kenshin soundtrack from retsuko, and some yummy chocolates for the ConnCon gang this weekend. More later, when not frantically trying to prepare for 3-hour seminar in which I have to discuss a 2000-year-old poem about where to buy good female sex toys while being observed by an elderly female Spanish professor.