June came and went too quickly

What? Wasn’t I supposed to chronicle my June donation and let you the reader have a say into where my monthly gift goes? Whoops.

But I did get some good suggestions from my previous post. My sister who volunteers with Amnesty International suggested I send some money their way. Hat tip to my brother-in-law who said the Khan Academy was a worthy cause with their free lessons in everything. A former classmate had a personal connection to the Vancouver Aquarium and another classmate thought a donation to anything related to the VPD would be timely after their service in our recent riot. (Found the Vancouver Police Foundation online but there wasn’t a way to give them money.)

In any case, I did make a donation to The Hero Initiative. They are a group that helps comic creators when they need emergency medical aid. The Hero Initiative provides “financial support for essentials of life and an avenue back into paying work”.

I’m not huge on comic books; I’m not even what could be defined as a casual reader. But I do pick up the occasional graphic novel and follow the Geekin’ Out podcast so I have a lot of respect for these artists. I also found it amusing that a group like this, a group that supports deserving people in need, this group wouldn’t need to exist in Canada.

Monthly Giving

One thing I want to get everyone’s help with is my monthly giving.

I decided a couple of months ago to give $30 away every month. (Don’t worry. It wasn’t out of generosity. I was signing up for an expensive gym membership and my girlfriend reminded me that if I can afford to pay the monthly fee, I could afford to give that money away. $30 is the difference between the asking price of the gym and what the negotiated price was.) Previous recipients of my small — but scrappy! — donation includes Canucks for Kids Fund and Gamers Heart Japan.

But finding a new deserving group every month gets tiring. That’s where you come in. Rather than asking people on Twitter and letting them tell me I should give the money to them, I’ll see about putting up a poll here every month and let everyone decide for me.

More to follow. Let me know if you have suggestions for June.

Letter to the Strata

I received a notice from my Strata and I wrote this in response:

Good day,

I received a notice of bylaw violation in the mail today in reference to “Resident’s two dogs” being off leash on common property. As you are aware, this would be truly in violation of Strata Bylaw 43 (4).

However, you are probably not aware that I do not own two dogs. I do not own even one dog. In fact, there has never been a dog in my possession, even before I lived here.

As such, I hope this notice will be taken off any file that might exist and that no fine will be levied. However, if a fine is assessed, I hope that Strata Council will provide me with two dogs at the Strata’s expense and that I will get to choose the breed. (I have always hoped to adopt pets from the SPCA, so perhaps this could be arranged.)

I patiently await the Council’s decision.

For your consideration.

The new age of networking for the shy ones!

So I had the opportunity to attend a web writing workshop with the Disgrasian bloggers Jen and Diana a couple of weeks ago. When I got there, I realized that they weren’t going to be there in person: they were just going to Skype in.

I also enjoy their unique fashion sense.

After I took the 10 minutes I needed to get over it (They’re good looking), I realized it was ironic because I had wondered on the way there why they would bother to come up to Vancouver. I also realized that it was okay because I was not the kind of person to go up to them afterward and chat them up.

But wait! Why not? Does this not represent a great opportunity to discuss the manner in which they shape our culture, whether or not this was their original intent? Wouldn’t this be a great way to make links into this community, or more importantly, into The Community? But given the constraints of the Skype format, the most I could do was get in touch with them via email or Twitter afterwards.

Then I realized it: that is a great way for shy people to network at events. Instead of chatting everyone up and being the life of the party (or bringing others to life at the party…), it would be much easier to just make any impression whatsoever and continue the conversation later, online. Their email, blog address, or Twitter identity would be easy enough to find, but they would likely just give it to you. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s still better than not having any interaction at all.

I guess the only thing would be to avoid coming off like a stalker… but that’s never stopped me before.

Because they don’t take curtain calls

Today, I witnessed a police officer in the DTES help an elderly Chinese gentleman dementia find his family, who was worried because they had no idea where he ran off to. This police officer had very little reason to stay at the scene after it was determined that the elderly man was not wanting to report a crime as was originally thought. She was able to achieve this despite a language barrier and a significant psych/confusion/dementia component.

There’s been a lot in the media in the past little while about our local and national police forces, specifically the mistakes they’ve have made and the outright scandals they’ve been involved in. That’s all we hear about. A big part of that is because they aren’t in the habit of coming out and saying, “Hey, we’re good at what we do and you know this because this is the successes we’ve had today, these are the people we’ve helped today, and these are the people we’re going after tomorrow.”

I would be remiss if I did not mention the contributions of the BC Ambulance Service. They responded within minutes to the call and expertly dealt with the man’s injuries. The two paramedics were well versed in the possible facilities that the man had come from and were familiar with the best emergency department for the patient who was better able to communicate in Chinese than English. One of the two Caucasian paremedics was able to care for the man using some rudimentary Cantonese too.

Of course, their work was assisted in part by the two Boy Scout members who performed first aid and the three fire fighters who were first on the scene. Rounding out the collaboration I saw today, two staff at S.U.C.C.E.S.S. assisted the police officer in contacting the man’s family and caretakers so that they could be reunited with him at the hospital.

I know that once you start thanking a long list of people for their contributions, it starts to mean less and less, but all the organizations I mention above should be very proud of the work that their members do.

Practical Applications

I don’t have cable TV at home, so I spend a lot of time in the common exercise room in the building. (They have free cable there.)

The other night, I was watching a show called DEA on Spike. It’s essentially depicting real guys in the Drug Enforcement Agency going after drug dealers and building cases. (If it sounds like I’m oversimplifying their careers, I’m not. The show is.) The program’s not too heavy on content and it seems like they spend the three minutes after each commercial break recapping the four minutes before the commercial break. So my mind starts to wander and I think about school and it hits me:

These drug dealers that never get caught would operate much more efficiently and at lower risk if they hired a consultant to analyze their supply chain and make some recommendations.

Let’s take a step back here. All I know about the drug trade (the one on the streets, not this one) is what I see on The Wire. Standard practice would be going after the street level dealers and make deals with them, trying to get them to turn on the people at the next level up. McNutty, er… McNulty and the team went after the big players by doing the investigations required to uncover the evidence of wrong-doing at the high up levels.  The work is complicated by the institutional dysfunction everywhere and things succeed to varying degrees. But that’s like real life.

Anyway, an ebusiness concept that really makes it difficult for those high-level criminals to be caught and convicted is the idea of separating atoms and bits. That’s the idea where, given a business run over the Internet (or through other electronic communications, I guess) the data, i.e. the bits, involved in the transaction don’t necessarily have to travel together or even on the same path as the actual goods being bought and sold, i.e. the atoms. It’s like how you could arrange to buy an iPhone from me over Craigslist and I send it to you using UPS. Before the Internet, it would have been very difficult for this to happen in any practical manner.

And you see this in The Wire too. It’s stupid to have the same person take money for you and hand you drugs. The fuzz be watchin’ you all over, son! Applied to a higher level, the top decision-makers in the criminal organizations run everything without even touching the drugs that would get them a conviction.

In any case, it’s interesting. Please don’t take this further and run a drug distribution organization. Or arrest me.

Let’s step it up, boys

Via Twitter (@thatwhichmatters), I recently saw this video featuring a poem by Taylor Mali:

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

It made me think of the youth leaders that I work with in a leadership program. Individually, each young person is impressive, generating ideas that my aging mind would never come up with. I am in awe of their collective potential. When the occasion calls for it, they manage to speak eloquently. However, when they’re just, like, hanging out and stuff, some of them can be… bratty little punks. Sometimes.

Recently, I noticed a disturbing trend. While there are strong leaders from both genders, it is the girls that are more consistently professional, rarely lapsing into moments that cause me to cringe and long for the good ole days. Too often, the male leaders that our organization depends on become a little goofy, opting to prioritize making the cheap joke or getting the laughs over getting the job done or strengthening our community. (This is clearly not a scientific study and crunching the numbers might prove these occurences to be statistically insignificant, but just go with me on this for now.)

See what I mean?

The easy explanation would be that the boys aren’t as mature as the girls. They grow differently and girls are biologically supposed to start earlier. I haven’t seen the data myself and The Female Brain is still collecting dust on my shelf. (Delving into some works by Dave Eggers right now.) I doubt that’s the whole picture because you run into girls that, for lack of better description, do stupid things. Instead of getting attention through the comedy, they spend vast amounts of time trying to look pretty. I have no frame of reference in being a young woman, but in the context of serving our leadership program, certain things seem frivolous. So it would be really difficult to say that it’s just biology.

(I realize at this point that, especially for young people, there are many ways to enjoy life. Very few of these have to do with volunteering with a leadership program and doing what some old(er) guy thinks is good for the community. But in this part of their lives, I just see the potential to do better.)

My question is this: How much of it has to do with the fact that there are so few leaders whose examples we can follow? (I see many role models on The West Wing, but imitating fictituous characters can prove to be problematic.) Do my own poor speaking habits (and off-colour, ill-timed humour) make matters worse?

In any case, the boys need to keep up with the girls in this regard. I’m glad that we are in a position to allow our young women to contribute to the causes of their choosing in the manners of their choosing, but caliber of our young men is sometimes a little embarassing. Let’s remember to lead in a way that we can make our organization proud.

Act as if ye hath faith…

I’m reluctant to say that I’m going to start using this blog to brand myself because I never really saw myself as someone who would use the word “brand” as a verb. But this is exactly what I am doing from now on.

Instead of using this space to just write about funny little things, I’m going to start writing to bring out the parts of me that I like, the parts I want to cultivate, the parts I want to flourish. I am hopeful that it will start moving my life towards the subjects that you will read about right here. What can you expect?

1. Supporting our youth

I hate the reputation that youth have to carry. Just like any other group, they’re burdened by stereotypes perpetuated by the few. There are many young people who do great things in our communities and it behooves us to learn about them and help them do their good works.

Assuming that no one considers me a youth anymore.

Oh, and I hate bullies too.

2. Health care

As a health care professional, I have lots to say about what goes on in actual practice and how it differs from what we read about in the papers, hear about on the radio, and see on TV. It concerns me when misinformation spreads faster than H1N1 through a kindergarten class where the parents have opted to avoid vaccinating their children after hearing about vague, unproven “risks”.

Photo from Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Seriously.

Oh, and I think everyone should be able to receive health care fairly, regardless of how much money she or he has.

3. I’m no better than you are. (Now your turn!)

Speaking of treating each other fairly, I am a big fan of diversity, pluralism, multiculturalism, or whatever they are calling it these days where we are the same but we’re different and that’s good.

Oh, and I think race, religion, and age are sometimes inappropriate ways to differentiate people. But it depends. Sometimes they are the best way. Let’s be human beings about it.

4. Democracy is not a spectator sport

Being involved with politics these days is often seen as a negative thing. There is too much association with the mud-slinging, trying to get elected at any cost, and winning for the sake of winning. Why don’t we hear our leaders talk about how they are making our lives better anymore? Is it because they are too busy feeding us (mis)information that will make us less likely to vote for the other people?

I feel very strongly that we should learn about what our government services do for us and what we can do to support them. Because it’s not them; it’s us. We should be engaged and follow what is happening to our governing bodies, especially when the issues are not the ones we see on TV (i.e. American issues relating to American governments on American channels). And that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to follow the news produced by political parties. 85% of Canadians have never been a member of those parties anyway, but all of us have been Canadians.

—

So that’s what it’ll be from now on. I have to give these things room in my life to grow because they should be bigger in my life than they are right now.

Afraid that I won’t have interesting things to write about or my writing style will be boring? Don’t worry. I’ll still be making fun of things and talking about drunken exploits on Twitter (@tonytung) and in my notes on Facebook (reachtony@gmail.com). (Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be talking about movies, my hobbies, and fun things rather than actual drunken exploits.)

A fresh new start…

I’ve been putting off writing (and reading) for a while. It’s easy to say I’ve been busy but maybe I just haven’t been deciding that it’s important enough. Same thing.

So thanks to Fran for the reminder that i need to be doing this more. In the spirit of “That which gets measured gets done”, I’ve been setting goals and keeping records of habits lately:

• Entertainment budget – With a goal of about $10 per week until the end of the year, I have $16 remaining. Whoops.
• Exercise – After being told I got fat during my sister’s wedding tour, I’ve created an exercise schedule for myself. Up until this week, I’ve managed to follow it. (Feeling crappy after the flu shot made it necessary to sleep more rather than exercise.)
• Fast food – Tried to limit myself to one fast food meal per week. And the dream lives on.

So this is just one more thing I’m going to be doing  in pursuit of being the kind of person I want to be. What is more, I’m going to be changing what I do here too. More to follow about that, so please keep up with the now (at least) weekly writing.

Lady, get a bigger ring.

So I finished four exams this morning and realized that it was my sister’s fiance’s birthday today. I hadn’t gotten him anything and was going to visit the two of them at their home next weekend. I’d better make use of this opportunity to shop for a gift.

Wait. I’m coming out of UBC Robson. I could just get him a jacket with UBC logos on it and hope he doesn’t notice it was a last minute gift. Oh, too bad. He got one of those last year. (Sorry, Mom, but he probably already knew.)

Across the street from school is a Chapters and I recently got an iRewards card, so it was a logical choice. Who doesn’t read these days?

After about five seconds of browsing, I thought of a book by someone Isb-something about something to do with Canada. He’d probably like that. So I decided to seek it out. I didn’t find it immediately (or ever), but I *did* find a cute salesgirl who I decided was making eye contact with me because she thought I was something special to look at too. But I was on a mission and could not be bothered.

About another five seconds later, I asked her for a recommendation. And she was awesome. We spent somewhere between 5 – 10 minutes going between a few sections, talking about the books that she likes (some selections involving zombies, some graphic novels), the kind of guy that my sister’s fiance is so that we could continue to (obstensibly) look for a great gift, and something about how her dad is a big fan of Conan the Barbarian comics. She was awesome.

Near the end of that, VERY near the end of that, she was talking about a book, a book that I was holding in my very hands, when she said something along the lines of, “… my husband really liked that book too”.

“Y’Goddamnit!” was what went through my head as I noticed that she was (subtly) wearing a ring.

And that, ladies, is how you get some guy to buy four books from you at Chapters.