Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

It sounds like common sense that half a truth is not the whole truth, but in truth most people are probably not aware when they only have half a truth. A little crumb of compelling truth is enough to decide things for them. You may have seen assorted news about the conflict in Gaza, especially about student protests such as this one at UBC . I can't remember when it was that I first learned about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but I do remember it was about the Hamas "terrorists" acting for Palestine. Just the label "terrorist" decided for me that Hamas were the bad guys and therefore, Israel must be the innocent victims. After all, that's what terrorist groups do: They attack innocents to force governments to recognize their demands. War has erupted again, and this time students in North America were siding with Palestine. Older and more guarded about the various subtle attempts by media and politics to influence the masses, I decided to do more...

Despite more technology and more forms of communication possible, how is it that communicating with your bank can be so hard? It really still comes down to people. They can use the technology, but if there's no proper follow-up, it's all useless. Which ultimately leads to simply looking for another financial institution. (1) Earlier this year, I received  an email from a CIBC "Financial Service Representative", Tej Gill. This was the second time that this person has emailed me. When I emailed them back the first time, they did not reply and simply sent me another email weeks later, in March. (2) The email I received in March (slide 1 below) was just as vague and thoroughly uninformative as the first one: I tried reaching out [top] you regarding one of your investment accounts. Please give a call at below number [sic]. Is this some attempt to sell me more stuff? What is this about? I didn't want to waste my time calling, hoping that this person might be in and avai...

My mom is getting on in years but still refusing to treat herself to new things. So this Mother's Day I splurged a bit and got her a Qings Cake  ("King's Cake"?) They can make pictures in a jelly based on photographs you provide, but even without any photos, they have a good assortment of images you can choose from. I didn't have a picture of the cat my mom used to have, but they did have a fluffy cat image, and with a colour substitution for the fur, it turned out really quite well. From a distance it can look quite realistic but of course once you zoom in close, it's clearly not a real cat. Still, the detail and artwork was impressive. (I think many people might be much more impressed, but I'm a jaded sort and very little really impresses me). You can contact them through Instagram to get their current brochure of products -- a small 6-inch jelly cake is not the only product! I'll go through the specifications and my experience with you but I won...