The year was 1993. I had been working with Club Med for about a year when I finally got the assignment I’d been waiting for: a six month season on board Club Med 1 in the Caribbean. Then it was six more months on Club Med 2 in New Caledonia, which turned into a year and a fantastic cruise throughout Southeast Asia. And finally I was back on board Club Med 1 in the Caribbean for one last season and an Atlantic crossing.

I knew the day I stepped foot on board CM1 that I would be in love with her forever. And with her sister CM2. Since then, Club Med has parted with CM1 but CM2 still sails around the globe. Her five 50-meter masts, 7 sails (for a total of 2000 m²) and 187 meters in length make her the largest sailing ship in the world. Yet she only draws 5 meters and manages to slide into the most remote and shallow places. Wherever she goes, heads turn and jaws drop. She has the dignity of a queen and the perfect lines of a modern scuplture.

But if you want to find out more about « my » ships, you’ll have to learn French and read Les Aventures d’un GO désorganisé. I wrote a good part of it on board CM1 and CM2. Sadly, I didn’t own a digital camera back then and the pictures I am showing here aren’t mine. The copyright goes to Benoit Donne. Thank you Benoit!

I was recently posting from the waterfront and mentioned a passing ship, to which someone replied: « Where’s the picture of the ship? » Well, here we go.

The ship was Princess Cruises’ Diamond Princess. She was back in Vancouver a couple of days ago and I went for a closer look. The 116,000 gross tons ship is as impressive up close as she is from a distance. Imagine a gentle giant with the looks of a spaceship and carrying up to 3700 people across the seas …

Built in Japan at the cost of a half billion dollars, the Diamond Princess (as her sister the Sapphire) is 952 feet long, has a beam (width) of 158 feet and totals 18 decks! She features very prominent enclosed and extended bridge wings and her trademark jet-engine style decorative pods on each side of her funnel. Her electric propulsion system is remarkably environment friendly and driven by a gas turbine / diesel engine combination.

As my friend Silvia was commenting as we stared in awe, mankind – despite its rather dark tendencies (see my previous post) – can certainly show tremendous imagination and infinite creativity. The things we build are simply fantastic. If only we could show the same talents when it comes to our spirituality…

Geese olympics.
« Run, Forest, run! »

Stranded.
« Kids, yell with me: Wil-son!!! »

Port Moody isn’t so bad after all...

Going to Port Moody was a mistake, a last minute decision due to the menacing clouds that hovered above my initial destination, Deep Cove.

There are a lot of very pretty areas around Vancouver but Port Moody isn’t one of them. Sitting at the very eastern end of the Burrard Inlet, the little town cannot claim for its fame much more than a shallow muddy bay and a very average waterfront park.

But since I was there, I followed a family of Canadian Geese and then went to have a look at the fascinating sulfur mounds. Being indifferent to rain and snow, the mineral is stored in the open awaiting to be loaded on board freighters. The bright yellow little hills are quite an eye sore to an otherwise enjoyable landscape but they make for rather eerie picture opportunities.

They remind me, as I bask in the pure bliss of living in a metropolis that’s just been ranked third most livable city worldwide (after Zurich and Geneva!), how unavoidable industries are for the human race at its present stage of evolution. My dear race… Grossly intolerant of others but pretty content with itself, narrow-minded and near-sighted, incorrigibly belligerent, systematically wasteful and hopelessly idealistic. Gotta love it!

[To be continued]

Monday morning, 7:30 am, Victoria Day.

Streets are deserted and finally, it’s raining. Dire Straits’ Private Investigations is on my MP3 player. A few people rush by in the morning grayness. My coffee is warm and soothing. Somebody behind me is messaging online to an unknown party who could be anywhere in the world. Time is such a relative concept. While Vancouver is still lingering in the mists of a long night, the streets of Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, must be bursting with animation. The market for cheap copies and vice never sleeps.

Speaking of vice, I just watched Crash for the second time and must say it ranks way up there with the best movies I’ve seen recently. A superb cast gives great performances; the storyline is split into mini-slices of life that end up relating to each other, proving that our lives are forever entwined with thousands of others.

The drama feels real and characters aren’t exaggerated super and anti-heroes. They are down-to-earth people dealing with their daily routines in the all-too-racist L.A. society and crashing into one another randomly - or maybe not? Quite a strong film. Must see.

And then there’s Bloody Sunday. Except that in this case, I didn’t know much about the actual events that took place in 1972 in Derry, Ireland. So I went to the IMDb web site looking for more info about the movie and the events, and ended up spending awholotta time reading user comments that had turned into a venomous exchange about N. Ireland, politics, etc.

Then I realized that the movie is probably only pouring fuel into the fire, a fire that still hasn’t stopped burning, and that presenting the 1972 events as a mere civil rights crowd massacre by the British troops was just too simplistic. It’s like talking about the concentration camps without explaining the whole political process that lead to them. Of course, it was wrong. But why did it get to that?

In the end, I’m just not qualified to judge the N. Ireland situation. I’m not even sure the protagonists are themselves qualified. But in any case, the killing of innocent civilians was, is and always will be the worse of crimes. Movie watched, note taken.

And finally, I gave What’s Eating Gilbert Grape a try. Surprise! Very touching movie, with Johny Depp in a pre-megastar status and Leonardo Di Caprio proving that he could actually act before he became « King of the world ». Talk about a small town disfunctional family! And yet, the movie is not about sensationalism, nor is it attempting to make us hate or love the protagonists. They simply are there, they go through their lives dealing the best they can with the cards they’ve been delt, and learn along the way, as we all should... Sad and heart-lifting at the same time.

1:25 am

It’s hot in here. The fireplace is squeezing real flames out of fake wood and too many people are using laptop computers, each blowing their heat into the coffee shop. The combination of warmth and music has slowly made me slip into a comfortable stupor. A few cars driving by outside seem remote and part of another world.

As I sit in coffee shops and at terraces listening to music, day after day, the city is getting under my skin and I slowly soak in the very essence of life in Vancouver: simplicity.

And music is always present. There is no doubt in my mind that music is a great conductor of emotions and insight. Taking for granted that everything in the universe is vibration, then music must at times find a way to superimpose itself on our own personal vibration patterns, and that of the world around us; it must tune itself to the environment and like if cued by the expert hand of a celestial DJ, synch itself perfectly to an instant of the bigger picture. Then wonderful things happen.

I suddenly see the world more cleanly, I understand it to a deeper level. The fog of routine and intolerance is lifted. I notice details normally invisible to my eyes. I feel things more intensely, my emotions suddenly revived like a faded photograph at the touch of a photoshop pro. Neglected neurons are firing up, new connections established. I feel alive and charged up, like a live wire waiting to spark. And most of all, it all makes sense now.

I don’t think it matters what kind of music one likes, it’s the result that matters. Different kinds of music seem, however, to generate different patterns. So one would be well advised to carefully choose the medium’s rhythm according to their needs.

As for me, well,

I find that Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik, Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliett are only suited for museum visits and exploring European cities, where they are great. [Edited in October 2007 - What a stupid thing to say, they are great all the time. I guess I was trying to be funny. Duh!]

On the other end of the scale, Rammstein does wonders for workouts, trail runs and road trips.

The Sisters of Mercy are fantastic any time, so is Pink Floyd.

Web or graphic design? Coldplay, Keane and Indochine.

Walking around the city goes well with goth rock like Nightwish and Within Temptation.

When hunting for picture opportunities, something very theatrical such as Jean-Michel Jarre or the Red Army Choir gets me in a creative mood.

Before going to sleep, Sarah McLachlan, Zazie or Farmer relax and soothe me.

Reggae and the likes are a must to fully appreciate the vibes of tropical sandy beaches and palm trees, especially Marley, Lavilliers, Tosh, Toure Kunda and Alpha Blondy.

Jazz and blues, as well as flamenco, are perfect for coffee shops where they enhance the smells, the tastes and the numbing warmth.

Some vital statistics now,

• There are 1481 songs in my playlist. That’s 3 more than I remembered.
• 786 of them are rated 4 or 5 stars. It means I like’em a lot.
• 6 song titles start with a z. They come last.
• There are no z’s in the word music.
• One song is longer than 40 mins. It’s long and boring.
• I listen to music an average of 323.75 days a year.
• I wish I was listening to music at least 14.7 more times a year.
• I operate the Windows Media Player v.10 out of laziness and Winamp because I’ve got to have all the toys.
• I have only broken one of my fingers. Once.
• I own an old MP3 compatible CD player (thanks Nance) and a newer small Philips flash memory player which does a great job but eats batteries like I eat saucisson.
• I never wear those when biking but always when running, and sometimes when grocery shopping. But Rammstein has been known to cause me to through food into my cart with excessive enthusiasm.
• My earphones don’t piss off half of the bus passengers and they sound great, but they fall all the time and tickle a bit.
• Vancouver rocks.
• I don’t sing along unless it’s already raining.
• I’ve never listened to music while paragliding. It’s the only time my own vibrations are so in tune with the world that they couldn’t possibly be enhanced.
• I can spell music backwards. cisum.
• Pavarotti IS a tenor, Paganini WAS a composer. (The Hunt for Red October)
• I am able to play Frère Jacques on the piano with two fingers. But then again, that’s also the way I type, and call elevators.
• Right, said Vince,
• I’m, too sexy for this blog.

Who goes to see a blockbuster on a Saturday night a few days after its release? A whole lot of hardcore fans, many movie buffs, some fools, and me. And Silvia. And Seida.

It was actually Silvia’s idea. It was nuts, so I went along. Let’s meet after work, she said. I’ll be there at 7:30 pm, I answered. I got there at 7:25. The movie was showing at 7:00, 7:30, 8:00, 8:45, 10:00; 10:30, 11:00 and 11:30. The first 4 or 5 shows were sold out. What’s the earliest available? we asked. 10:30. Sold, I said. I paid, got handed the tickets, and as I was reaching for them, a voice announced the 10:30 show was sold out. Pfew.

So we were told to get in line at 9:30 pm for the 10:30 pm show. The line stretched through a corridor and resembled a concert ticket sale overnight waiting line. We sat on the floor and read movie magazines. Then we were let in and sat some more while the seats filled one after another. A theatre employee was kind enough to provide distraction and trivia games, and threw new Hersheys at the crowd. It was odd.

And then the Da Vinci Code started.

Now, I’m not going to fuel the gossip and controversy that have surrounded the book and now the movie. If one wants to make an opinion about these things, there are already a millions sources out there that have taken this all too seriously and commented furiously one way or the other. So no pros and cons in my post, no black or white. A lot of grey, and some nuances.

From a cinematographic point of view, I’d say things were ok. Great actors, doing their best with a script that wasn’t always very easy to deal with. The action scenes were a little too "music-clip’ styled for my taste: flickering hand-held shots and flashing blurry visions. The technique had annoyed me in The Bourne Supremacy, it did tonight too. But Tom Hanks with longer hair is credible. Ian McKellen is up to the challenge and manages to make us forget he – recently – was a mutant. Audrey Tautou is… Well, très jolie. Jean Reno sticks to his quite successful French cop character. And Paul Bettany improvises with brio on the freak-villain genre.

But hey, so what? The movie is not about itself. It’s not about acting or directing or Hollywood or religious beliefs or theories of this and that. It’s not offering solutions or rules or dogmas. It’s just a mirror. What it really does is make you think. About yourself and your own beliefs. It’s about symbols and how we interpret them. It’s about the choices we make and the people we choose to follow. It’s about the incursion of legends into our daily lives, and why we accept some and reject others. It’s about faith, not as a religious quality but as something more universal; faith as a survival skill. As a drive and an example. As a reason. And a question.

I came out of the theatre rather happy. I had anticipated a terrible disappointment based on the rumors I’d heard form Cannes. Instead my mind was tickled. No matter how we rate The Da Vinci Code, the fact remains that it deals with what is probably the most important aspect of our society, history. And history gets distorted, that much is clear. Understanding this might be the lesson hidden behind the Code.

I find symbols fascinating and I can relate with people who spend their lives studying their meaning and separating facts from fiction. Good symbols are like a very strong thought or an excellent quote: they carry much power and need not be adjusted or revised. They can probably survive the passage of time and remain today what they were thousands of years ago. It makes me want to walk around looking for clues of the past in my daily life.

Let’s just not fight about history. It’s as ridiculous as the two drivers at an intersection arguing about who ran into the other. It’s too late for that; instead figure out how to make sure it won’t happen again.

Riding back on the night bus, surrounded by a lot of loud and inebriated younglings, I had time to wonder how we all fitted in the global picture. All of them together exhibited the mental agility of an average pig, and yet we were going the same way, on the bus and in life. The history having bred us and the symbols guiding us are the same… Tolerance is sometimes as costly as Vancouver real estate.

I got home at 3:00 am. And the tap dripped dripped dripped dripped dripped...

At first the road cuts through the Fraser River delta, flat lands and suburbs zooming by and easily dismissed. But soon the valley takes shape and mountains appear to move in from a distant horizon. They begin to encase the scenery into high granite walls, on the left and the right, their summits still snow capped and majestic.

Chilliwack is left behind and after two hours on the road, there is Hope. Hope, B.C., is a small town, voluntarily circumnavigated and quickly forgotten. Then some fifty kilometers beyond, when Hope has faded away, appears Hell’s Gate.

None of it makes sense. It should be the other way around. So after descending to Hell’s Gate on the Airtram and spending some time overlooking the river at its narrowest and deepest point (120 feet depth when the pictures was taken, can get to 170 feet deep!), one must turn around and drive back towards civilization, leaving Hell’s Gate behind, gaining on Hope, and finding that it leads to Vancouver.

A cruise ship passes by headed for the First Narrows and Lions Gate Bridge while another blows its horn before departure at Canada Place. Seaplanes are buzzing around like bees and docking one after another in a roar of turbines. Kids scream playfully as they run through the fountains. Jazz music pours out in waves from somewhere nearby. A few words arrive carried by the wind from the loudspeakers onboard a touring paddlewheel boat. A gorgeous blond girl at the next table is laughing out loud and gives me a smile. They are drinking martinis and beer and have a loud toast to the arrival of summer. Sound is everywhere, pulsating, reverberating off the façade of glass buildings. It isn’t aggressive, though; it’s just alive, in the city’s image. As Tom would put it, this is a perfect QVM*.

* Quintessential Vancouver Moment

Note: for the purists, the passing ship is the Diamond Princess, of Princess Cruises. Along with her sister ship, the 116,000 tons Sapphire Princess, she is the largest cruise ship to ever come to Vancouver. She is 951 ft. in length and will carry up to 2646 passengers and 1100 crew at 22 knots to Alaska all summer.

The float planes are mostly DeHavilland Twin Otters, Otters and Beavers as well as Cessna Caravans. The DeHavilland are Canadian-built aircrafts and constitute the bulk of the world’s bush flying fleet. Pratt & Whitney PT6 turboprop engines make even the single-engine Otters and Caravans quite reliable and their only rival is the expensive Swiss-made Pilatus PC-12. They fly continuously to Victoria and the Vancouver Island, and many other Lower Mainland destinations.