It’s one of those mornings where I can’t put two words together. This is a problem when you’re being paid to write… stuff. And things.
An unforgettable experience in the city of glass
One of the pleasures of technical writing is the annual conference of the Society for Technical Communication. Most technical writers will attend every STC conference that their company will send them to. For the lucky ones, that means attending conferences in Orlando, Hawaii, Chicago, and other exotic places. I, on the other hand, can only attend when it’s in town. This is the first year it’s been in Vancouver.
Last Friday, I was just bubbling over with excitement as I passed through the convention centre’s giant revolving doors. My head was full of visions of well-formed XML, controlled language, and single-sourced documents. At the registration desk, they gave me my ID badge and wallet (for holding the many business cards I’d collect), a tote bag, and a complimentary copy of Douglas Coupland’s City of Glass, then pointed the way towards the free coffee and cookies.
Amazing! All this free stuff! And all I had to do was give them $300 of my company’s money! I could have left the conference right then and felt like I had more than my money’s worth!
The first seminar was about cultural issues in localization, in which I learned that one should avoid hand gestures in translated documents. After that, I attended a philosophical discussion on the nature of human existence and how to represent it using clip art in a PowerPoint presentation. To my great disappointment, I arrived too late to take part in the “Networking Lunch”, which is a great way to collect as many business cards as you can in the shortest time possible. Picture speed dating, but with a lot of golf shirts and tote bags involved.
Finally, the afternoon rolled into view, and I sat in on a discussion on well-formed XML and how to validate it against a DTD. This was the most exciting talk of them all, because every now and then a crow would fly up to the window, squeeze through a hole, and hop around in the ceiling for a bit. Those were the shortest sixty minutes of the conference.
In retrospect, I’m sorry that I didn’t pay the extra money to attend on Saturday as well. I left the convention centre without a single business card in my complimentary wallet, and I had to miss Saturday’s talk about how to become a journal author.
On the other hand, I had some precious memories, a belly full of cookies, and a copy of City of Glass. Incidentally, I’d highly recommend City of Glass to any Vancouverite. If you read it with a pencil in hand, you can have fun underlining the frequent inaccuracies. The photos are very enjoyable too.
11-11
Canadian grave near Vimy. June, 1917.
Cough, cough. Sniff. Cough.
At about midday yesterday, Sabine departed Vancouver to wend her way past Alaska to Kansai International Airport in Osaka. The part about Alaska surprised me at first, until I remembered that the world is, in fact, spherical, despite the flat maps they show you in school. Kids, don’t be deceived. The world does not begin on the left with Hawaii and end on the right with the Bering Straight. It’s round. Yes, I was shocked too.
In Japan, apparently, it’s traditional to give omiyagi — gifts — on practically every occasion to almost anyone you have ever known or met. Okay, I may be exaggerating, but the amount of gift giving going on there seems a bit on the excessive side. Here’s an example. Sabine hopped on her flight, leaving Cubicle Dweller with all kinds of interesting omiyagi, such as strange snacks (which I’ll add to Project Snack 2 eventually), as well as some kind of nasty Japanese cold. I should have been firm on that point… thank you very much, but I’d rather not have a Japanese cold. This figures. It’s a holiday Monday, and I’m stuck at home with a runny nose that doesn’t even speak English. How do you say “go away” in Japanese?
What do I use to fight a Japanese cold? That’s right… Japanese Dristan. I suppose this is the equivalent of Neo Citron here in North America. Dump the powder into a mug, add boiling water, and BAM — instant hot, lemony drugs. Mmmm. Druuuuugs.
Unfortunately I only have one of these things and I’m not sure if the drug store is open today. So after this one wears off, all this cube dweller can do is loll around feeling sorry for himself while watching Star Trek reruns.
Warning: may contain adult language and hollandaise
“Eat your fucking lettuce,” the waiter said, thrusting my emptied breakfast plate back at me. This isn’t normally what you’d expect from your waiter, but this isn’t a normal café. This is the Elbow Room on Davie Street. Their motto: “Food and service is our name, abuse is our game.”
If you’re from Vancouver, you probably know all about the Elbow Room. It’s the only place (that I know of) where the serving staff will freely berate the patrons. It’s all very good-natured yet surreal at the same time.
I’m not big on the insults, but the food is absolutely amazing. I had the BC Benny — two English muffins, cream cheese, smoked salmon, two poached eggs, and hollandaise, all on a bed of lettuce. Mmmmm, hollandaise. I’m drooling at the memory of it.
Anyway, I managed to avoid eating the lettuce on the grounds that it was too healthy and avoided the waiter’s ire. Presently, the people at the next table got into a mock squabble over the tip, with expletives flying, at which point Sabine pitched in with “Oh, you’re offending my virgin ears!”
Without pause, he shot back, “That’s about the only part of you thats still a virgin!”
Well, Sabine may have lost that little exchange, but she can trade insults with the best of them. She gets along best with the smoking, tattooed, soccer-playing guys in Japan. She must be a real shock for the traditional types there.
The people next to us finished the dregs of their coffees, and waiter came back, bellowing “You’re done. Get out.”
After a few more expletives, they settled the bill and left, at which point I noticed that they had left a little note on their table, scribbled on a matchbook: “This is your FUCKING tip!!” (with little happy face.)