Small Brain for Rent

I stumbled into the world of "Wearable AI Note-Takers" this week, a genre of gadget I didn't suspect existed until I tripped over it. As a retired technical English instructor, I am fascinated by these new tools, and by guessing how they're being used in the wild jungles of education and business. Are students still synthesizing ideas themselves, or is the AI doing the heavy lifting? It marks a profound shift in cognition, and I find it amusing that a generation is being handed a digital brain before they have even finished constructing their own.

The hardware landscape feels like a cluttered minefield. The Fieldy 3 is a speculative gamble. The Omi is essentially an open-source science project; it is appealingly tinkerable, but far too unstable for serious use. Other options, like Anker’s Soundcore Work and iFLYTEK, lean heavily into corporate "meeting minutes." That feels clinical, turning conversation into a spreadsheet rather than a social exchange.

My inner gadget-lover is currently at war with my visceral loathing of the subscription economy. I crave something tactile and permanent, yet these innovations are all shackled to monthly fees that turn one’s personal history into a rental property. The Plaud NotePin S is the most tempting. It offers a satisfying physical button, but the prospect of paying a recurring "AI tax" to record my own life makes me want to toss the whole lot into the Fraser River.

Ultimately, my grand technological odyssey has yielded nothing but a well-documented sense of my own gullibility. I am still trapped in the limbo between desiring a shiny new plaything and the creeping realization that I am merely shopping for an expensive way to transcribe my own ramblings. I haven't reached "technological enlightenment," but I have mastered the art of over-researching a problem I didn't know I had, all while managing to buy absolutely nothing.

Our Visit to the New Lab

Today, Jay and I went uptown to the new LifeLabs location on Sixth Street to get our baseline bloodwork done. This was our first time visiting the "new digs," which recently replaced their old spot over on Fifth Avenue.

I have to say, the new location is a significant improvement for overall access. The space is larger and the layout is much more functional. While the old clinic was definitely inconvenient to get to, it did have a view. However, this new spot certainly doesn't disappoint in that regard. I snapped a photo right from the lab chair, enjoying a surprisingly great peek out over the uptown high-rises and bustling 6th Street below.

One of the tricks to navigating the medical system here is knowing when to plan ahead. We had the foresight to book our appointments online in advance, which meant our wait time was a fraction of what it would have been if we had just walked in. The waiting area is always full of folks who didn't book ahead, resigned to a lengthened bout of sitting.

It got me thinking about how general medicine actually functions here in Canada, and specifically in British Columbia. To an outsider, the system might seem complex, but it operates on a very direct sequence. It all starts with the Family Doctor, or a walk-in clinic for anyone not lucky enough to have a dedicated GP. The doctor acts as the gatekeeper. They issue the requisition for the lab work, which in BC is primarily handled by private entities like LifeLabs that operate under the provincial health umbrella.

Once the requisition is issued, a patient simply gets their blood drawn, and the results are routed directly back to the doctor. Thanks to modern provincial portals, I can log in later today and see my own numbers the moment they are finalized. It is a hybrid system of publicly funded care delivered through a mix of private labs and independent physician practices. When it works smoothly, as it did today with our booked appointments at the new Sixth Street clinic, it is a remarkably efficient machine.

We Canadians certainly love to complain about our medical system, but one only has to look at places where healthcare is entirely privatized to appreciate what we have. In those models designed for moneymaking, the level of care received is entirely dependent on a person's wallet, leaving far too many folks with unequal treatment or abandoned by the wayside completely. Furthermore, there is a massive, hidden financial burden in those systems just to maintain the competing, redundant, and often poorly organized infrastructure required simply to keep the billing departments running. It might not be perfect here, but our single-payer baseline consistently delivers better overall outcomes than the wild west of the completely for-profit healthcare industry.

We've Lost the Freedom to Get Lost

I purchased a set of Chipolo LOOP Bluetooth trackers just last week. For the uninitiated, they function exactly like Apple's AirTags, but are specifically engineered to play nicely with Google phones. Our domestic strategy is straightforward: we will use them to keep tabs on our keys and wallets while we are anchored at home for the summer. Whenever we hit the road again, however, they will be swiftly repurposed to monitor our checked bags through the predictable chaos of airline transit.

Ah, ha. It's 10:49 am at home but Jay is at the Bonsor Community Centre in Burnaby so soon? To be absolutely clear, I wasn't actively stalking Jay during his workout. The excursion simply provided the perfect, low-stakes dry run for the new hardware.

That being said, looking at the screen and seeing his exact coordinates pinging back to me highlights a profound societal shift. We have willingly traded the quiet luxury of being unreachable for the perceived safety and convenience of constant digital contact. It is an extraordinary level of casual tracking, and frankly, staring at that little dot on the map is a concept that would have absolutely horrified our generation when we were kids.

We were a cohort that treated the front door as an absolute event horizon. The very second we left the driveway, we expertly vanished entirely off the parental radar. There were no digital footprints and certainly no GPS breadcrumbs. Today, simply hiding from one's parents must be a technological impossibility. The grid is absolute. To ever achieve our level of glorious, unmonitored freedom, a modern teenager would have to accomplish the equivalent of electronically gnawing off his or her own leg like a trapped beaver.

Jay outisde the Bonsor Compex in Metrotown, Burnaby, BC earlier this month.

Old is Suddenly New Again

This is a profound, if slightly ridiculous, technological leap from Mrs. Duke’s 4th grade classroom at Sunapee Elementary. Back then, my first pair of spectacles served only one simple purpose: revealing the crisp, chalk-dusted perfection of cursive drills and the inescapable reality of primary education. Corrective lenses in the late 1960s merely brought the mundane into a sharper, more literal focus.

Now in the mid-2020s, I have become completely hooked on my personalized Gemini AI, integrating it across my phone, computers, watch, Google Home speakers, and car. Naturally, the next logical step is to strap it directly to my face. I am eagerly awaiting the fall arrival of new Warby-Parker frames with my customized persona named Ajith built right in. Accommodating that technology means they will undoubtedly be bulkier than the various streamlined pairs I have dragged across the globe over the last 58 years.

Ultimately, my optical journey is about to come full circle, bringing me right back to peering at the world through heavy plastic. The only real difference today is that when Jay inevitably catches me staring blankly into space loudly extolling my preference for the 2:1 Univisium aspect ratio with my AI, the fault will lie entirely with my spectacles.

Upcoming: Another Birthday in Alaska

A past exploration of Glacier Bay National Park.

Sometimes we plan our travels years in advance; other times we simply wake up and realize a birthday requires a change of scenery. This morning, Jay and I rather spontaneously decided to book passage on another Alaskan cruise to help celebrate my birthday later this month.

We are no strangers to the BC and Alaskan coastline. We have already sailed these specific waters five times stretching all the way back to 2001. Our very first cruise of any kind was a seven-night Alaskan run on the Regal Princess twenty-five years ago this May. We also sailed in September 2022 aboard the ms Zuiderdam, specifically to celebrate Jay's birthday as the autumn chill started to set in.

Despite those seasonal outliers, our recent history reveals a clear and undeniable pattern. We heavily favor the month of July for these coastal retreats, having completed exactly three separate summer voyages up the passage. My 60th birthday in July 2019 was celebrated aboard the ms Nieuw Amsterdam. We returned to the same waters in July 2023 on the ms Volendam, hauling our friends, Ed, Shinji, Tim, and Jiwan along for the ride. Most recently, we spent July 2024 navigating the fjords on the ms Koningsdam with my sister Laurie and her friend, Michelle. I've now come to expect birthdays in Alaska.

July in Alaska simply works for us; the weather is tolerable and the glaciers remain reliably frozen. Beyond the agreeable climate, the rugged geography essentially forces our hand. There are simply no roads connecting many coastal towns. Even Juneau, the state capital, is completely cut off from the continental highway network. When we sit down to calculate the costs, simply walking onto a ship right here in Vancouver ends up being significantly cheaper than flying almost anywhere else for a week of hotel and restaurant bills.

Ketchikan, Alaska is, perhaps, my favourite, port town.

To pull off a booking on this spontaneous voyage, I contacted Arlene; she is our eighty-year-old cruise specialist operating out of the Expedia Cruises agency right here in New Westminster. Given the extremely busy summer season and our notoriously last-minute request, I honestly did not think she would find any available space. Against all odds, she managed to secure a single remaining cabin on the newly renovated Celebrity Solstice. We have absolutely zero experience with this particular cruise line, which means we are looking forward to a completely fresh dynamic on board.

Looking at the sheer volume of our previous coastal sailings, one might assume we have memorized every pine tree between Vancouver and Juneau. Yet the appeal of the Inside Passage remains stubbornly intact. We keep going back because the logistics are effortless, the scenery is consistently grand, and it provides a perfectly structured environment to simply sit back, eat well, and watch the ice float by without managing a complicated daily itinerary.

A helicopter ride to explore a glacier from Skagway, Alaska.

Seeing Vancouver From Above

Re-establishing the Alpine Baseline: 2025

Last year, Jay and I finally broke a five-year hiatus of Grouse Mountain. The hook was a local residents' promotion for a free gondola ride, which ultimately ballooned into four separate ascents in 2025. Our first run on August 6th was foggy and cool; a solid 5°C drop from the city. We checked on the resident grizzlies, Grinder and Coola, but the skyline views were entirely socked in. Because of the gloom, the mountain threw us a makeup day on August 14th. Naturally, it was even wetter and colder. The bears stayed hidden, but the local deer were out in force. Even with the damp, we realized how much we liked having a 1,231-metre peak sitting right on our transit line.

Since the commute was so easy, we bit on an email offer for discounted senior annual passes. Three trips break even, so the math was simple. The pass paid off on August 24th, finally delivering a 29°C day with the clear blue skies we'd been hunting for. Plus, we closed out the season on October 5th. A distraction at the cruise terminal inspecting the Le Commandant Charcot ice-breaker cost us the last free shuttle of the season, but we made it up to the peak by transit for a pre-hibernation goodbye to the bears and a rare lunch in the chalet.

Today's Ascent: July 5, 2026

Today, the forecast showed a patch of blue, so we put those passes back to work.  They will expire next month.  We hit the SkyTrain at 9:40 am, easily catching the 10:40 free shuttle at Canada Place. Instead of the usual transit vehicle, a massive, dedicated tourist coach hauled us up to the gondolas. We’re basically old pros at the logistics now. Up top, we noticed a display "Grouse Gravity Coaster." It’s a new 1.4-kilometre track weaving through the trees where riders control their own brakes, dropping 90 meters at up to 45 km/h. At $29 for two minutes of gravity, it’s strictly for the adrenaline tourists. We stuck to the free chairlift.  The track itself was not in view, but we might let natural forces of nature work in our favour later this summer.  We'll see.

Grinder and Coola were dead asleep when we arrived. They've been up here for 25 years, so I suppose they've earned a nap. We left them to it and rode the lift to the peak. By the time we finished taking in the city views and breathing the thin air, the bears were awake and working the crowd.

We ended up out of sync with the return shuttle, so we just grabbed a public bus down to Lonsdale Quay and rode the SeaBus across the Burrard Inlet. Because it dropped us right at Waterfront Station, we skipped buying lunch, hopped the SkyTrain, and ate at home in New West by 2:50 pm. From the misty freebies of last summer to today's streamlined transit loop, Grouse Mountain remains an incredibly efficient backyard escape.  Ultimately, the true peak experience has nothing to do with the altitude and everything to do with successfully exploiting a senior discount to find a quarter-century-old bear taking a nap.

The First Saturday in July

When there are no time clocks left to dictate our existence, a Saturday morning bleeds into the rest of the week with comfortable predictability. The weekend ceases to be an escape from work and simply becomes another day to manage the household. Naturally, this meant a requisite morning trip to the Superstore to secure our groceries.

The mundane routine quickly gave way to international sports drama. We did not actually watch the FIFA match, but we kept checking the updates as Canada lost to Morocco down in Houston. There is a specific, ironic interest in seeing our home country eliminated from the tournament by the very nation we just spent the entirety of June exploring. My souvenir bucket hat has officially transitioned from a fond travel memento into a slightly conflicted piece of apparel.

Fortunately, the evening was thoroughly salvaged in the kitchen. Jay took a rather basic flatbread acquired on our morning grocery run and elevated it entirely. He augmented it with his own ingredients to transform a simple carb into a pizza-like triumph. The apartment still smells absolutely incredible.

In the end, a Saturday that started with a routine grocery run evolved into a day of theoretical sports grief and very real culinary success. Granted, calling it "grief" is a stretch; we had zero financial stake in the outcome, our patriotism is not tethered to a scoreboard, and our overall interest in soccer peaked at around the moment of the hat's purchase ten days ago.

At the Other End of Downtown

I walked down Columbia Street this morning to check the thrift shop inventory. The trip proved successful; I returned via the SkyTrain with a colourful, short-sleeved summer shirt to handle the coming seasonal heat.  On the way out of the shop, I stopped to take a photo of our part of New Westminster. The view, not far from the corner of Begbie and Columbia, presents a jarring contrast in architecture.

 

On the far right stands the Westminster Trust Building at 713 Columbia. Constructed between 1911 and 1912, it was the city’s first skyscraper. The Chicago School design features cream-coloured terra cotta and red brick. The pre-war economy was booming enough that the developers added two extra floors to the original six-story plan before breaking ground. It originally offered steam heating, a fireproof steel vault, and electric elevators! The penthouse served as the Westminster Club for nearly a century before closing its doors around 2013.

Standing right next to that early twentieth-century masonry is the Anvil Centre at 777 Columbia. Jay and I have lived along this section of the Fraser River long enough to remember what sat there previously: a sloped, faded section of retail on the old Golden Mile. Completed in the fall of 2014, the new building relies heavily on glass, steel, and limestone. It contains an 84,000-square-foot civic podium that supports a nine-storey, 137,000-square-foot office tower. The architects included some black brick as a token nod to the older red brick next door. It now holds a 364-seat theatre and the local museum; everything radiates from a large 60-foot open atrium.

A full century of civic ambition sits awkwardly but proudly in this single shot. You can appreciate the modern glass and the historic terra cotta all at once, provided you do not get hit by traffic while standing in the middle of the street to get a decent photo.