Twice in Waikiki

I'm still pulling out little piles of old photo snapshots and scanning them. I give myself plenty of rest too.  So far, I've run 1610 pieces of paper through the plustek ePhoto Z300. I was right thinking there'd be at least a couple of thousand to complete. 

Lately, I've been scanning ones that feel relatively new but, in actuality, are more than two decades old. This was our first trip from Canada involving a flight over an ocean. We took a Canada 3000 for a one-week packaged hotel stay. Then, we stayed on a few days after finding a relatively cheap Waikiki hotel.

 

We returned here on a port day on our big 'Vancouver to New Zealand' cruise on October 5, 2017. However, by that time Kodak had gone belly-up and the KODAK HULA SHOW ladies were only a part of island history.

A Little More Flour and Some Warmth

Brad McGillicutty made a little hooch over the week. 

He was more than a little pleased to get out of the fridge and get fed.

 

Downtown Pile Driving

 

I erroneously assumed that most of the site prep work would be completed when we got back from our winter in Mexico. Wrong. Perhaps the COVID restrictions kept progress at bay. It was a larger undertaking than I first assumed too. Basically, the land where two, enormous residential towers will sit was not originally a riverbank. So, essentially, crews are readying a place for new skyscrapers on reclaimed land. 

Presently, that means a whole lot of pile driving is taking place! This project is progress, therefore, I'm not about to complain too much. The bang, bang, bang does get more than a wee bit annoying when one is within earshot all day long though.

The Contractor Gets a Plumbing Permit

 

An email arrived this morning from city hall.  It explained that our application for a building permit was accepted.  We had to make an appointment to go up and pay the $486 fee to pick it up.  I suggested today at 1:30 pm.  I had begun collecting the required materials in mid-May.  I scanned a large packet, including a Land Title office deed, and sent in the PDF via email on May 21st.  Now, Jay and I have the results in hand.  So, we are one of many steps closer to having our bathtub removed and a full-sized, tiled shower installed. 

We arrived a few minutes early at city hall. Our email suggested that we not come ahead of time. That was fine. We easily took ten minutes visiting adjacent Tipperary park.

 

'Pretty & Cool' and 'Pretty & Perfect'

On the way uptown, while doing some errands, we parked along Simcoe Park and took a look at the community garden plots. When we first arrived in New Westminster we rented on Agnes Street. At the time our buildings were pretty high for that end of downtown. Now, however, one can see one of our old towers surrounded by newer ones. It seems as though our little city continues to grow up!

   

Today's weather is so much better than what we had over the weekend. But forgive me for complaining: I find it's kind of cold for June. The high was 16°C and the low tonight will drip to 6°C.  When does summer get here?

Have you ever seen an animal that likes to soak up the heat? Well, that's a bit like me. 

Let's see ...  the temperature in Negombo, Sri Lanka is 28°C but will drop to 26°C tonight. It seems like those are always the temperatures in Negombo. So, we really do need to look over the plans for this apartment building shown below. It is due for completion in three years. This could very well be the time to get in on the ground floor so to speak.

 

Old Snapshot Arrives in Time for Retirement

If you've seen daily posts on 'my eJournal and images' in the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed many old snapshots have surfaced. My goal has been to scan everything so that I can throw away around fifty pounds of yellowing paper and albums. These have been sitting in our closets in Canada for about twenty-five years. I'm making pretty good progress and estimate my work is nearly half over. 

I recently added all my fading images from Kuwait in the early 80s. Once I knew they were securely on Flickr, I looked for an up-to-date contact at my former school. Of course, forty years on, it was easy to turn to social media and I sent messages to Mr. Kevin Fullbrook. Here is our exchange:

 

What auspicious timing! I can send my wishes for a happy retirement to Lamies just in time! Sixty of my recently-scanned, school images can be found here.

 

During Our Second Year in Canada

I am still slaving over a hot scanner. Whenever I have a few minutes, a few times every week, I pick a pile of old snapshots and run them through the Plustek. I immediately upload them to Flickr snapshot album. 

Although I have completed some of my initial overseas years, there are still many more. However, I recently moved to the new snapshots taken in Canada during the years before my first digital camera. Although I consider them recent photographs, in reality, our first summer in BC was now 25 years ago! I completed many from the summer and fall of 1996 earlier this week. 

Today, I hit several rolls. I've now uploaded 1,470 formerly-paper images.  Some of the ones I added today were from a trip in November 1998. During some time off that year, we took our very first trip to Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa. We figured it was a necessity to visit our adopted nation's capital city!  We flew on a now-defunct airline called Canada 3000. We must've travelled by bus to see the other cities.

 

Is It Time to Get Prematurely Grey?

 

It could be.  I like the idea of  'Metallic SILVER'.

Then, how come the unopened box has been sitting by the sink for three days already? 

Am I chicken?  

Span Tower 24

Today, out of the blue, I got a marketing email from a Sri Lankan construction company. It was to an old email address, so they must've been ensuring their lists are up-to-date.  For years, I've been inquiring from various sources about property on the island.

Span Tower completes only smaller projects, most under 10 stories. The capital of Sri Lanka is now awash with enormous megabuildings and shopping complexes. Those who sent me information today seem to build normal residences rather than luxury condos designed for international speculative investment.  This is the sort of building in which ordinary hardworking people could eventually own.

   

So, I did a bit of research on the projects coming up for completion soon. That let me Google Map the areas to find one which would be of interest to us. Some folks spend a lot of wasted time thinking about impossible things. I suppose I should be grateful that I can daydream about things that we could actually afford.  It'd be nice to own a place we could use for winters or rent out.

June in New Westminster

 

Yesterday's weather played a triumphant encore for us.  The temperatures again reached 28°C with brilliant sunshine and copious blue sky.   We ❤︎ Queen's Park in our city of New Westminster, BC.  Having such a large chuck of public land in such a tiny city is a true blessing.  

    

We find the park is only a tiny diversion when driving uptown. We measure our steps with my activity tracker. So, although we only made a short 1.5 kilometer loop through part of the park, it made for a very rewarding use of our time.  It was a nice thing to do before stopping for groceries at the mall.

 

Lastly, despite the warning, we were not nervous about running into any of the park's other visitors this morning.

Buntzen Lake or Bust!

 

Last summer, because of COVID, we stayed around home for most of the summer. We did decide to drive to many nearby neighbourhood parks of 2020. It was nice to see outdoor places so close to us that we'd never bothered to visit. We could even walk from our apartment and spend a nice time in many park settings. However, last summer we tied to go to one local favourite but couldn't get there!  Because of road work, we couldn't get to Buntzen Lake Recreational Area although did stop at another lake not far away.

   

When we saw that the weather was going to be great today with high temperatures near 29C, I knew we should go back to the BC Hydro run recreational area. This lake served as the first hydro-electric infrastructure for Vancouver at the beginning of the previous century when electricity was primarily used for street lighting and running the electric trolleys.  Buntzen Lake is only around 25 kilometers (15 miles) from our apartment.

   

Quite a number of folks had the same idea as it wasn't empty on a Tuesday morning. People were not the only living things enjoying the place.

 

A Bit of Kuwait (circa 1982)

Over the last dozen years, I had scanned a few dozen snapshots from my days in Kuwait. I worked there as an elementary teacher from 1981 to 1983. 

 

Last month, however, I finally bought a dedicated photo scanner in order to make copies before the ink and paper deteriorate further. I completed one set of nearly two-hundred images this afternoon. Many will eventually benefit from some quick editing, but I can get to that at a later time.

Making an Object Out of Thin Air

 

It'd be hard to justify the investment in my 3D printer for the practicality of the items I have made. The parts I printed for securing by drone's propellers during travel being a lone exception. That is not the point though. My Flashforge Adventurer 3 is a relatively cheap, but geeky, way to introduce myself to the technology. I don't know which I find more amazing: the hardware or the software! 

First, being able to accurately shoot a thick fishline of corn-based plastic through a 0.4 mm glue gun at around 400°F sounds pretty sophisticated. Then, the fact the bed and nozzle are accurate enough to create an object out of thin air is pretty amazing too. This isn't a typical creation where one starts with a block of material and whittles away until it becomes the object.  Rather, the process starts by adding layer upon layer of material to nothing. 

However, without software, the physical components could do nothing. I load a 3-D project file on a tiny application on my PC and the software figuratively slices an object into minuscule layers from the bottom up. Then, it creates a file for the printer so the information that can direct the nozzle to apply the hot plastic to the right place at the right time, in the right order.

   

The implications boggle. In the future, when the tech is more advanced, people may not have to buy certain items at a store.  They will, instead, be able to order only the plans or even download public domain copies. Many simple objects could simply be created directly by an end-user. Imagine how that could affect transportation, distribution, warehousing, and retail!

Nice Weather Makes for Nice Flying

It's time to charge up the drone batteries for my first-generation, DJI Mavic Mini.

 

Flying a drone is restricted in crowded Canadian airspace without an advanced operations certificate. There are a number of local smaller airports as well as a large international airport in Richmond, BC  and these affect the places where an ordinary drone is permitted to safely fly. The National Research Council has an online tool to help small operators choose a safe location. These two maps were copied from their site. 

Fortunately, I live in downtown New Westminster and have a lot of open space nearby.  As you can see, I'm most affected by Royal Columbian Hospital, due to BC Air Ambulance's helipad. In Canada, flying within one nautical mile of such a facility is not permitted.

 

Moody Park

Moody Park is a part of uptown New Westminster. We seldom visit as our time uptown is mostly spent shopping.  Today though, after going into Burnaby on Kingsway for Kin's Farm Market, we parked next to the uptown public, outdoor swimming pool. Today continued to feel cold but at least the sky cleared up for what I guess might be an extended period of sunshine. 

We noticed the large area where the use of liquor is now allowed. Seven parks in our city have implemented a test run of new rules on alcohol consumption. I think we have COVID-19 to thank for this change in Victorian-era-inspired regulations. It will be nice to be able to bring a bottle of wine or six-pack when visiting a park on a sunny day. I hope people don't ruin it by acting foolishly.