And now for some good news…oh, right

The Globe and Mail squares up to the fact that young people are in big trouble as far as the whole “prosperity” thing goes. Not too much of a surprise really, though I couldn’t have said it better.

I found two comments interesting.

First (reason: self explanatory):

You can bail yourself out all you want now, but when it comes to write the cheques in 15 years or so, me and my cohort will simply bail ourselves out by puting you into homes or icebergs.

Icebergs seem a lot cheaper, although global warming might pose a problem.

Second comment:

…. yes, they will surely demand more of their leaders. Like all youth, when they get really frustrated, about their prospects in life, they don’t go quietly into that good night. Bet on it. They will not lobby and protest in a ‘nice’ way. The street is their forum.

Sounds like either a deluded student government type or someone born in the 60s. Don’t they know it’s much easier to sit at home and watch TV than do anything about it. And more effective. Given voter turnouts and the general gray-hair-to-peach-fuzz ratio, it would take a pretty organized bunch of people to get something done. And we youth aren’t known for our organization.

Sam Roberts/Arkells/Mother Mother concert

Sam Roberts, the Arkells and Mother Mother played Deer Lake Park last Monday. And while the bands were good, the venue was even better. Full review here.

Fatally Injured=Killed

Metro Employee Fatally Injured Near Vienna Station

I suppose that WashingtonPost.com headline is technically accurate. It just seems like there’s a better word for “fatally injured.” Oh, right. There is. Killed.

Twitch

My right eyelid sometimes twitches like an epilectic at a Pink Floyd concert. I’m not sure why. It doesn’t look like its twitching (I’ve glanced in the mirror while it twitches).

A change of address…

Returning to Canada necessarily means a blog with the address of ninehoursahead and the title of Perogies and puzzled looks must die. It also means I have another set of priorities and obligations on my hands, of which first and foremost is finding a job or begging for freelance gigs.

I haven’t altogether stopped blogging however. My new gig will hopefully be more focused and probing and will continue to provide me with a reason to compulsively check my stats.

To see for yourself go here.

I said, go here.

Thanks and all the best.

Speedblogging from Milan

Some speedblogging from Milan:

Milan isn’t the fashion capital of the world for nothing. Tons of boutique stores here with toques and scarves for many hundreds of dollars. Shirts for thousands. Crazy. Perhaps because of all the high-end-ness of everything there isn’t much of a streetfood culture here. No kebabs. Guess the high property values are anti-good, cheap food. Also, no supermarkets.

That said, Italian drivers sure can honk. Guess you need to when your roads have no freakin’ lines on them. The Duomo here is quite stunning. Very intricate detail, outside at least. The inside is huge but you get the feeling they blew the budget on the outside.

Not much else. Yesterday was quite warm. 12 degrees when we got in around 4 p.m. Today chillier around 7, which is rendered more comfortable when Warsaw is supposed to get snow, snow and more snow over the next weekend. Also. Next Sunday, when we’re in Marrakech, it’s supposed to be 27 degree, in Marrakech. Not that I’m bragging.

The future

You may have noticed the frequency of posts and photos have tailed off lately.

Soon it will get even slower and one day nothing may be here. We’ll see. Magda and I are returning to Canada in about a month. On Tuesday we’ll be flying to Milan and then, on Thursday, we’ll be going to Morocco, where the temperature is currently hovering in the low-20s. It’s snowing in Warsaw right now.

I’ll try and update this throughout our travelling through Morocco and Spain, although that will be determined by the availability of internet cafes and my general mood. From Spain we’ll fly back to Warsaw then, from there, to London and on to Canada at which point this blog will likely end.

Or this blog may merely change its focus and, possibly, its location. There are plans afoot.

Priorities, priorities priorities

I guess the Vancouver airport policy was tazer first, interpret second.

Karol Vrba told the Braidwood Inquiry into Dziekanski’s death, currently underway in Vancouver, that he was in the airport’s operation centre when a call came in about a man who only appeared to speak Russian, causing a disturbance.

Vrba, who speaks Russian, Czech, Slovak and Polish, testified on Monday that he offered to help but was told instead to check on airplanes parked at the board gates overnight, so the airport could collect fees from them.

A story

In case you can’t find it on the Globe website, here’s the link to my story on divorce fairs.

Money, money, money

A story in Monday’s Globe and Mail life section considers the notion of financial honesty and looks at why people are reluctant to talk about money matters:

We live in a culture of money. Its power is among the first lessons we learn about the world. Those seductive, colourful toys, displayed for our pleasure and consumption, cannot be ours without money. Education is sold as a way to earn more money in better jobs. We invent verbs like “monetize” to describe how to turn every endeavour, even those we do for amusement, into profit. And yet we don’t talk about it – not easily anyway.

I think, though, the author may have missed something. You see, in my experience – and after doing research for an article for This Magazine – talking about money seems very much a generational thing. From an article I wrote for This Magazine (that’s what the magazine is called) last year:

University of British Columbia business professor Nancy Langton, meanwhile, sees young workers’ willingness to talk about income as part of a trend toward greater openness, something that social networking websites such as Facebook have facilitated.

“I think people in their 40s and older were raised to be somewhat more private and discreet,” she explains. “We see much less emphasis by today’s teens and twentysomethings on protecting privacy.”