Random Thoughts

As I write this, I can smell rain. You know that smell. Dig deep into your olfactory memories. It is that smell at the onset of the monsoon season. For those of you who have never experienced a real monsoon, it is that smell when rain falls on parched land. It releases that smell. I don't know if it has a word to describe it, but I know what it is. Well, my nose does. The first time I read the God of Small Things I wanted to get on a plane and go home. Arundhati Roy does a brilliant job of describing the rain and Kerala in general. That home exists only in my mind, but anyway. In the midst of an unprecedented draught, rain is finally falling on this parched rain forest. I am so happy. Back to the story at hand. Another happy story. As a child, I would have been looking forward to the 10 or so days off at this time of the year (well, it depends on something called a sidereal solar calendar which isn't in sync with the Gregorian calendar we use). People would make these elab...

I've said this before. Many , many , many times. I'll say it again. I intend to continue blogging at a more realistic pace than I have been in the past little while. Except, reality seems to be stretching to multiple months.  Recently, someone from a far away land asked me if I have ever thought of blogging. That jarred me from the present reverie into getting back here. I've been blogging since October of 2005. I was fully 10 years younger then. There were no iPhones back then. I had never heard of Facebook thought it did exist as an entity. A lot has happened in those 10 years. I moved countries. I changed jobs, companies, friends. I grew up a little. Just a little, so we are clear. I bought things that I am still paying for. I made decisions that were, on the whole, not bad ones. I learned new skills. I climbed many mountains. Rode many kilometres. Walked even more.  So, before I go too far down memory lane, listing random things that I keep in my mind, let...

Unless you have been living in a cave, or just chosen to be completely out of touch with the news in Canada, and you live in Canada, you will have heard of the on-going saga that is the Mike Duffy trial. Duffy faces 31 charges, some of which are pretty serious: fraudulent expenses, bribery, breach of trust etc.  The short version of the story is, Senator Mike Duffy claimed expenses associated with travelling on partisan affairs (i.e. he was out at Conservative party election campaigns) and per diems for housing which, by most reasonable people, appear to be incorrect, if not illegal. He asked the Senate, and by extension, the tax payers to foot the bill. His sordid housing story leads back to his appointment as a Senator from Prince Edward Island. A small detour on this. The Senate rules on housing are a bit vague. It goes something like this. If a senator owns $4000 worth of property in the province, they are deemed to be a "resident" and therefore eligible to be ...