A Trekkie? You?

Right now, I'm sitting in my living room and in front of me is documented proof of bucket list item #5 completed. Oh Calgary Expo Comic Con, how I love thee. I'll blog about the Comic Con experience in another post shortly, but I wanted to share here about my history about being a long time Trekker as a lot of folks have commented: dude, seriously?

Almost 25 years ago, I sat in front of my family's little 8" screen TV and tuned in to see the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was 10 years old at the time and already a budding geek with interests in science, space, video gaming, and comics. I knew of the original Star Trek series, but (shocker warning) Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock never really appealed to me. Through my eyes, they were outdated and any episode that I watched seemed boring, corny, or both. However I decided that I'd give this Next Generation a try. Besides, the guy from Reading Rainbow had a role in it and I never missed an episode of that show.

So I tuned in and watched this group of nine people try to save their asses, their ship, and humanity itself (as it was on trial  in this episode) from this omnipotent evil guy called "Q". The Reading Rainbow dude was blind (but he drove the ship!), the Chief Security Officer was a chick, there was this "needs more time in the sun" robot... er, android whom I found annoying, single parent families were the norm, and the Captain was this old British, wait French?, bald dude. After the pilot episode, I turned off the TV, marched up to my mom who was in the kitchen, and declared with all regale formality that I was officially a Star Trek fan.

My mom's answer, "That's nice dear."

Over the next 7 years, I never missed an episode and still have all the original VCR recordings from seasons 2 to 7 (season 1 remained elusive as our household didn't own a VCR at the time). Because I replayed each episode over and over, I can still recite the dialogue word per word of almost every episode (much to my friends' weird looks). Beyond TNG (and soon DS9 and later Voyager) I started immersing myself in all things Trek - learning about each character's background, the Gene Roddenberry's story, the process of filming the episodes, learning to love the original series (Whoa! They made movies too?!), and worrying about the characters who seemed like family to me. I clearly remember screaming loudly at that tiny TV as tears streamed down my face in disbelief when they killed off Tasha Yar (that Chief of Security chick), "You CAN'T kill her! YOU JUST CAN'T!!!" Yesiree, I was an official Trekker.

Why did TNG resonate so passionately with me? I felt that of all the TV shows during my upbringing, TNG not only appealed to geek in me with sci-fi, but understood me and here's the top 3 reasons:

1. Being handicapped doesn't limit your position in society. The blind dude didn't remain the helm pilot during the entire series. No, LaForge was promoted to keep the ship from "being blown to kingdom come" as ship's Chief Engineer. If a blind guy can be accepted as a colleague and become senior staff member of Starfleet's flagship, hey a deaf chick could do anything too (like a Ph.D. in microbiology).

2. The Crusher family storyline hit home with me as I deeply identified with the dialogue between the solo parent and child. Sure, the circumstances were different, but the fact that that social status wasn't an issue gave me hope that I did have a chance in life. As a kid growing up, I was branded "at-risk child" in my school system just because I didn't have a dad. If it wasn't enough to be bullied for being the deaf kid in a regular school system, I was also "that deaf chick from a broken home who you shouldn't be friends with because she's a bad influence". In the 24th century, being raised solely raised by your mom was regarded normal and even commended. Plus you got Captain Picard as your father figure role model. How cool is that?

3. Women can be strong leaders. This aspect of TNG has been mentioned over and over. At the time that the series was airing on the networks, the women's movement was still a huge issue. Except for Kate Mulgrew's Mrs. Columbo (where Mulgrew went on to become Capt. Janeway of the Star Trek Voyager series) and Kate Jackson's role in Scarecrow and Mrs. King, I didn't have many strong female role models to watch on TV. But with TNG, I saw Yar, Dr. Crusher, and Troi every week tackling various issues. I especially admired Crusher - not only being a single mom, but also a scientist. Often when I'm in the lab and suddenly realize that I haven't had lunch or supper, I can hear Dr. Crusher saying, "Sometimes I get so busy with research, I forget to eat!" (Lower Decks, Season 7)

Two years later after TNG premiered, I convinced my mom to drive me 3 hours to another city to attend my first Star Trek/comic con. She dropped me off at the door to the hotel lobby and I found myself with 500 people that loved Star Trek not as much as I did, but way, way, WAY more. Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) was the main (and only) guest star at that con 23 years ago. She graciously answered throngs of questions, sang for us, and signed my very first autograph picture! Although I was surrounded by strangers, I felt at ease and comfortable with them. They understood me and I understood them. After that experience, I made a point to visit any convention nearby and bucket list item #5 was written: to meet and thank the entire TNG cast in person. Thanks Calgary Expo for "making it so".

Getting "The Call"

I'm eating lunch and my mobile buzzes crazily. Five texts, from someone who I have no idea, begging me to play goal for them. I am an on-call goalie for several leagues, so this isn't out of the norm, but this catches my eye, "need you to play for Edmonton in the Provincials in two weeks".


Echo: the Provincials... Provincials... Provincials...

Cue the choking on my lunch.

Those who aren't familiar with Women's hockey, the Provincials are a big deal. Women's hockey doesn't have the same exposure as Men's hockey with various pro-leagues. There's no Women's NHL but a mostly unknown Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) league. In Women's hockey, to be a professional player, you're either on the National team or a CIS team or (most typically) both. The next level down is playing at the Provincials. So being on a recreational team and called to join a Provincial contender team is like being on a WHL/AHL team called to play in the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs.


My knee jerk reaction:

However, my first text response: You do realize that I'm a rec level goalie? (Hey, I have to be honest here, in case this was a mistaken identity)
Provincial team captain: Oh yeah! That's no issue with us. Besides you come highly recommended!
Uh, thanks... who recommended me?
Lynn (a league referee - thanks Lynn!). We're really needing an answer in the next 24h to make the carding deadline. Can you commit?
(Talk about pressure) I am very interested in playing, but there's also the issue of getting a release from my current teams. I need to contact my current rec team Captain to ensure everything's kosher.
Great! Let me know when you hear!


So my people talked to their people who talked to the Hockey Alberta league people, I'm feeling like a young guy on trade deadline day, and suddenly I'm in Banff suiting up for my first game.

We were able to win the first game (3-1, take that Calgary!), but lost the next two games (0-2 and 1-9...ouchie). The last game I felt horrible, but considering that we weren't discipline enough to keep out of the penalty box (note the penalty against us coming up in the last picture) and the opposing team was the team who won the Cup, it didn't seem so bad in the end. And besides, I kept my promise to myself that I would keep any game "goals against" score under 10.


Overall, the experience was fantastic! I never played at such a high level. Although I was very nervous, I surprised myself with denying some break-aways and great glove catches. I felt like a pro player with between period ice floods. A 15 min break/breather between periods in the dressing room, with fresh Gatorade awaiting us - imagine that! My body survived the 2 days, though the next week after I was kindly reminded that I'm not in my mid 20s.


Post game drinks with the team (as I was still trying to remember everyone's name) involved some wooing conversation that "You're not a rec goalie, you're a pro goalie. Your talents are being wasted at the lower level tiers! Come play with us full time next year!" My rec league team captain cornered me right after that weekend and said, "You're staying with us as long as you stay in this city." Nice to be wanted.


I must give a huge thanks to everyone who bought meat/cabbage rolls for this event's fundraiser. I do hate begging for money to something that people can't directly enjoy with me. With every save I managed to make (and I did have a fair share of them), I named each one after you guys.

Bucket listings...

Holy - May 2011 was my last check in here? So much for that 2011 resolution: one blog/month. Eh. It's not like there's a race going on here.

So 2011 is finito and onwards the 2012. Update of sorts:

Last blog post was about me discovering that I kinda like gardening/planting. Main thing I learnt about that: don't plant your strawberries under a clothes dryer vent. It wasn't even my vent, but rather my neighbour's vent that for some reason is on my side of the fence. So no berries to enjoy, but I did get the "tomato plant that keeps on giving". I never had so many tomatoes before. The flowers faired well on my front entrance. In the backyard, I found out "if you plant and forget it, it'll eventually grow in the future" as a couple plants popped up that I forgot I had.

The mice issue lingered far longer than it should've. Today was the first time I had a TOASTED bagel for breakfast. Yessiirreeee, I took out the toaster that I purchased 9 months ago and finally used it. Things learnt: toasted morning bread is a God-given thing. Cherish it.

Work wise, it's been a cat and mouse (ha) game of "we'll renew your contract". The good news is that I'm renewed til March 2012, giving me a full 2 years of official post-doc status. Bad news, I've yet to find the next job that HAS money. All current opportunities require me to find my own salary. So grant writing commences Jan 3rd and we carry on with job searching. My hope is that I can keep my current job until I have another position with money.

Speaking about my job, we did move into a shiney new building. Things learnt here: new doesn't mean working condition. The first two months were spent talking to maintenance folks with water/flooding issues, autoclave issues, and the automatic blinds issues (whom I've appropriately named HAL - HAL decides when my office needs more light; thanks HAL, now I can't see my computer screen).  I call my building a trophy wife: great to look at, but does crap all.

I'm just coming off a huge high from the recent holidays; no, Santa bring me a new job, but rather I crossed off item #3 from my bucket list: to hug and thank my Grade 7 teacher face to face.

Being a deaf kid had its obvious obstacles with learning how to communicate within this world. But being the sole deaf kid in a regular school system - that just add that much more strife to my upbringing. I was bullied daily and even at an early age was falling into a deep hole of hopelessness that it wouldn't get better.

Enter a teacher named Sandi.

Grade 7 was my last year at elementary school before the deep plunge into scary highschool. I found myself dreading five more years of being picked upon. Sandi somehow sensed my angst and encouraged me to chat with her about things. Soon it became a ritual after school chat with her, which quickly became my daily solace. Within these talks, Sandi encouraged me to attend univsersity, "Highschool will be difficult, but university all that crap about being different falls away. You'll be great in university! Don't worry, it gets better!"

Me? University? A deaf kid finally fitting in? Riiiiiight.

Fast forward to my first undergrad year, I found myself being inspired with the course material and meeting people who had the same interests as me. After that first year, I found myself saying, "She was right, it did get better."

Because of her extra effort, it was high on my bucket list to find and thank Sandi. This also included to write a letter of recommendation about her positive influence on me. Her kindness and encouragement needed to be known, needed to acknowledged, needed to be shared. But she disappeared on me. I had no leads for two decades on where to find her... that is until this past fall.

Google is a wonderful thing at times.

Suddenly I had her email address and we were exchanging emails. The letter of recommendation letter was written shortly after and sent to her superiors. People were soon asking me whether I won the lotto because I had this crazy huge smile on my face for weeks.

"No, but I crossed off a high bucket list item. To me that's a huge huge win."

Things lead up to this past holiday season, where we found ourselves in the same city at the same time and arranged a breakfast meetup. As soon as eye contact was made, warm hugs were instantly exchanged, followed by a 6h chat that ended much too soon. Although my memory of Sandi was from the eyes of a 12 year old; the warm, caring, enthusiastic, positive person who gave me hope so long ago still shines. Her life journey has been incredible and she continues positively influence people in the education system today, both provincially and nationally. She'll always be my dear mentor and now my close friend.

If you have a teacher(s) who inspired you, I encourage, no, challenge you this year to seek them out and let them know about the impact they made on your life. When the right teacher and student connect, everyone wins.

Encore, merci beaucoup Sandi!

My Green Thumb & I

Something shocking happened over this weekend: I found myself in a garden center getting excited over which annuals I'll bring home with me.

Now despite the mice ordeal (which I just realized that I've yet to blog about that... soon people, soon), I've been thoroughly enjoying my townhouse. Yes, it's a rental, but it's been amazing how much my mental state o' mind has improved with windows and greenspace. I enjoyed the wood burning fireplace over the winter months. Last summer I indulged in hammock naps. And year-round, my hockey gear dries out in the basement in peace without smelling up the entire place. It's not that I'll be living here forever (I do want to own a place), but even mice can't stop me from enjoying my townhouse.

Apparently living in this place has tapped into the gardener in me. Growing up we had gardens, and every spring/summer I'd watch my mom attempt to tackle every weed and plant what would call herself "beautiful" plants. As a kid, I could care less. It was beyond my logic why would people spend hundreds of dollars for plants that don't really grow well in Canadian environments. Fruit/vegetables I understand, but trying your darnest to grow some orchid or lilly in forever sun (no shade) or forever shade (no sun) conditions, plus the neverending "chance of overnight frost" never resulted in successful gardens.

But my mom seeing my distaste in gardening would kindly tell me: when you're older, you'll develop an interest in all of this. Standing for 3 hours in the greenhouse debating on several flowers and legumes to grow in my tiny garden space in my townhouse probably means that I'm officially now older.

And poorer - spending $110 on plants. I bought a variety of flowering plants including asters, salvia, and others which I forget the names. I'm also trying a mini vegetable garden of peas, green beans, tiny tom tomatoes, blackberries, and strawberries. I'm not expecting to reap anything. But the chance of it growing in my lil' niche I'm looking forward to.

And sorer - after an afternoon on my knees in the dirt and lugging around potting soil and mulch, I found I had new unused muscles. Apparently goalie knees aren't gardening knees.

So it's all weeded, tilled, and planted. And now the water & wait game commences. I probably did everything wrong in planting and choosing the best combos to plant together. But I think that's part of the fun, an experiment if you will - the trial and error of gardening. If I eat three beans or a half of a strawberry or just witness tomato flowers, I'll consider it a success.  (I'll post pictures soonish... blogger is being silly slow with uploads atm).

I spy with my DSLR eye...

It's a given that I already have a hobby (*coughs* hockey), however I've been wanting to expand into the world of photography for ages. My first love of snapping pictures started well before I hit double digits. My mom had an artistic streak in which I inherited (tho my analytical side apparently won the career direction). Where she played piano/organ, painted, drew, and crafted, I found myself behind her old Kodak flashcube or Canonet 19 cameras. Of course she never let me use actual film back in those days, but I went about my summer days with an unloaded camera in hand snapping pictures that were forever developed in my mind.

Fast forward to my 8th birthday when I received my very first camera to call my own: the Kodak disc 4000. Yessiree, a disc film camera - the future of cameras! Just like 8-track cassettes, BetaMax VCRs, and New Coke! Needless to say I was unimpressed, but made the most of that camera and its flower-like negative discs that were cumbersome and clunky to store. The cost of photography lessons and owning a decent camera (plus film developing) was never in my budget, so I was stuck on relying on crappy birthday cameras (all of which came from my father, go figure). The next camera I received launched me into the digital world with a Canon Powershot S50. It spent more of its time eating batteries than taking pictures. I was able to "upgrade" to a Powershot SX100, which I enjoyed its extra features to play with. But unPhotoshoppable grainy stills and blurred action shots plagued me and I found myself yearning a "real" camera.

After much window shopping and rubbing pennies together to make nickels, I recently took the plunge into DSLR world. The first debate was which name brand to invest in. I was able to narrow things down between Nikon vs. Olympus. Nikon cameras are incredible but scare the hell out of me with their bulkiness and "oh-there's-another-button-for-that" features. Plus, I didn't want to be toting around a small child on walkabouts. Olympus cameras offered "back to basics" models, with their retro style and their Micro Four Thirds lenses which compacted the camera size. Though my photography friends chanted Nikon is god, I listened to my inner child summer days of wandering aimlessly in the fields and down the back alleys and bought an Olympus E-PL1 camera (with the promise that my 5th year anniversary of "real"camera ownership, I'll bow to the Nikon peer pressure).  Of course buying the camera was just the first step. Lens filters, cleaners, cases, shoulder straps soon followed, but I felt giddy taking my first set of pictures just as I did as a kid in those lost summer days.


I'm far far faaaar from being a professional with Ollie (yep, I named him), but I've been having a great time already. I'm committing that each week (mostly weekends), I'll wander somewhere and snap up my surroundings. I'll also be taking a few classes over this summer to learn the finer points of using available light and fun with apertures. I have a few photo projects already in mind that I've started on my flickr account.


Two projects already underway:


Sign Language
No, this isn't what you think it is regarding the world silence, but rather the world of advertising. I appreciate a good ad slogan/campaign. The creativity behind the ad is often amazing or quirky to get the message across. Other signs are just: why did you waste the ink? If it turns my head or makes me smile/smirk/cringe/groan, Ollie shall capture it.


Tombstones Talk
This taps into my morbid side a bit. Although graveyards are probably the last place for most people to wander around, I find them fascinating. So much history and art laid before you. Every tombstone tells a story. For example, in my wanderings in Banff, one tombstone had 4 names inscribed with all deaths occurring in the year 1918 only months apart. Since car crashes weren't *that* common back then, one could surmise the Spanish Flu was the culprit. 


I have some other projects in my head, but unsure whether they will take flight. For one I need to review the laws of photography in public. I know the general rules regarding individuals and private property, but the line becomes fuzzy for other areas. Time shall tell. Maybe my next blog entry will be from my lawyer.


Moooooosic. As one big on Canadian music bands, I don't think I've posted anything yet from Barenaked Ladies (le gasp!). This group was one of the pivotal groups of my highschool days. Today I found myself humming to Brian Wilson on the bench. I need to go to a concert of theirs again real soon. Enjoy peeps.