Best Olympics ever?

The Beijing Olympics have now concluded, and in many ways, I think this has been the best Olympics games ever. China is a great nation that has been very welcoming to visitors for a long time, but the Olympics have opened the eyes of the world to China and it has proven to show the world that China is not the way you would read about it in the media.

China has thousands of years of history and a long list of accomplishments to be proud of. Its people are proud, peaceful and warm-hearted. Before the Olympics, it would be difficult to view the mainstream media and extract anything positive about China. Western media portrays China as the next threat to "freedom", a violator of human rights, and oppressive. But the Olympics have opened many Westerners eyes about everything that is positive about China. Most people associate Communism with Tyrant Dictators. Now the world can see that China has many things very well even with its one-party state. The government treats the people well, and people in China are happy and peaceful. China has its flaws no doubt, and it's far from being perfect, but many of the things our media criticizes it for are hypocritical for us to say. Furthermore, the West can learn a lot from China from the things it does very well.

I've been carefully watching the announcers on NBC throughout the Olympics and the attitude towards the Chinese has completely reversed. At the beginning they were repeatedly bringing up the topic of human rights in China, censorship, pollution, joking about getting sick from the food and investigating every angle of the Olympics to attempt to identify scandals. On the last day of the Olympics I heard nothing but great things about Chinese hospitality, the Great Wall, the history, the people, the list goes on. The very same announcer who was drilling President Bush on Political topics (during what was supposed to be an interview about the Olympic Games) was talking about how great of an experience he's had in China.

Andrew Potter wrote a good article in a recent Maclean's magazine "The West, mad at China for being fake: that's rich", (September 1, 2008 article) - in response to the media fury that criticized China on its Olympics fakery. I liked the part where he says: "Hard to believe it needs saying, but it is spectacularly hypocritical of Americans to be accusing another country of being mean by privileging beauty over talent - even as China's manipulations are reported by news anchors who are themselves pumped so full of Botox they look lobotomized"

I'm glad that the world will now view China in a different light now that people are a little bit less ignorant about the country. But you'll always have people like Omar Welke, a Kitchener resident who wrote a letter to the editor of Maclean's and said: "I'll have to forget that China builds its wealth by ignoring common health and labour standards, and floods our markets with cheaply made, often hazardous and tainted manufactured products and food items."

I'm curious how many products Omar himself has purchased that have actually been hazardous or tainted. Omar must not truly understand the extent of products that are imported into North America from China.

Survived my 107KM Solo kayak trip

At 3:30PM today I returned from my 2-day solo kayak trip from Toronto to Oshawa and back to raise money for Noah's Ark children's home in the Philippines. Every muscle in my upper body is aching right now, but it was a great trip and totally worth the effort.

On the way there I had perfect weather, and I even sported a bit of sunburn on my back. I left Toronto yesterday morning at 7:30AM and arrived at my destination at 5:30PM, so it took me a full 10 hours to get there. In looking for a good place to camp, I figured what better place to camp than Camp-X! Camp-X was a secret British training camp for spies during World War 2. It was also the home of Igor Gouzenko, the famous Soviet spy who defected in 1945, providing the Canadian government with 109 documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West (Gouzenko has widely been attributed to triggering the Cold War).

I was in pretty rough shape upon arriving at my camp-site, so I quickly setup my tent, ate some food, and I was lying in my sleeping bag by 7:30PM. I felt revived after my 10-hour sleep, so this morning I was ready to head back to Toronto.

On the way home I took a more direct route, staying further away from shore in order to shave some kilometres and time off my return trip. I was able to track my entire trip on GPS on my phone, so if you look at the maps below, the blue line represents my trip there while the green line is my trip home. You will see on the green line that at a certain point I started to head in closer to the shore. This was the point at which the water was extremely calm and quiet, and dark clouds were approaching me. You'll also be able to see the point in which the storm hit hard and I paddled harder than I've ever paddled in my life to get in to the shore at the beaches. Even though I saw dark clouds approaching, the lightning didn't appear until the storm was directly on top of me. The lightning was very close to me; I was caught right in the middle of it. The patrons at the store at the beaches watched me as I paddled and got out of the water in a huge hurry.

On the trip home I managed to keep a much faster pace, I think as a result of the good sleep I had the night before (I had averaged just under 6.8KM/h before the storm hit). I can't attribute it to the wind because I was against the wind both days (The planes at the airport were taking off towards the East on Saturday and towards the West on Sunday, so the wind had done a complete shift). Or maybe I was just more motivated on the way home because I had a nice dinner and a comfortable bed to look forward to.

I tried to simulate that I was crossing the lake (since that was my original plan). I didn't get out of the kayak for the entire 10 hours on the way to Oshawa, so I had the joy of relieving myself into a water bottle; that was an experience. On the way home I got out of the kayak to take shelter during the storm, but not surprisingly, I didn't need to relieve myself at all until after I arrived home (Likely from dehydration).

Thanks to everyone who made a pledge for your generous donations to this good cause. I think I'll be very close to my original goal of raising $4,000 by the time all is said and done, so thank you so much everyone for all your support! This was definitely worth the blisters on my hands ;) I can’t tell you how many times an image of Simon Whitfield running toward the finish line in the triathlon event came to mind. His dedication and focus is definitely inspiring.

Here are some stats via GPS tracking:

Toronto to Oshawa - 240 tracking points
Distance traveled: 55.12332 KM
Avg Speed: 5.511 KM/h
Total time: 10 hours

Oshawa to Toronto - 45 tracking points (To help save my battery)
Distance traveled: 52.47704 KM
Avg Speed: 6.314 KM/h
Total Time: 8.3 hours

100KM KAYAK TRIP IS ON!

This weekend I'm planning on doing my kayak fundraiser by paddling 100KM in two days from downtown Toronto to Oshawa, Ontario. I will then be setting up camp along the shores of Lake Ontario before returning to Toronto the following day.

Barring any unforeseen extreme weather conditions, I'll be departing on Saturday morning at 6AM. I'll be bringing my camping supplies and sufficient food and water to last me up to 3 days. I'll keep Monday as my contingency day in case the weather doesn't hold up for me on Sunday. I'll continue through the rain, but if there is lightning nearby, I'd be best to setup camp on the shore until the storm passes.

So far I've raised $2,670 for my Aunt's foster home in the Philippines, and I'm expecting that number to go up when I hear back from a few more people, so hopefully I'll get a bit closer to my $4,000 fundraising goal by the time I return. Feel free to e-mail me with your pledge if you'd like to provide support (Your donation is tax deductable). (Read full details in my previous blog posts: Kayak for Kids and Kayak Route Change)

I'm planning to track my progress using GPS on my Blackberry, and I'll hopefully be able to provide a link on this article where you can track to see where I am in real time. Keep an eye out for the link over the next couple days.

Mojo is going to sit out this event. Sitting on top of a kayak for 10-12 hours a day is not a lot of fun (even for a dog).

Colin Jenkins - Canadian triathlete

I'm watching the Men's triathlon right now, and leading the pack is Colin Jenkins, a native of Hamilton, Ontario. Before watching this event, I had assumed that every man racing right now would be vying for a medal. But as it turns out, Colin Jenkins, though he is leading the pack right now is not expecting to win a medal. His primary role is to support his fellow Canadian team members by leading the pack and controlling the pace. See, Jenkins is a great swimmer and a cyclist, but he's a weak runner (relative to his fellow competitors). So his job is to put out all his energy on the swimming and cycling to help his teammates.

By getting out in front of the group, he can slow the pace down to allow the Canadians to keep near the front. The idea is that his teammate Simon Whitfield or Paul Tichelaar can run their way to the finish line to win a medal. Whitfield won a Gold medal in Sydney in 2000, while Tichelaar is Canada's top-rated triathlete of 2008, ranked sixth in the world. So either Tichelaar or Whitfield has a strong chance at a medal today and Jenkins will be playing a large role.

It's amazing to me that a sport that I had assumed was an individual sport can be a team sport. Jenkins is making a sacrifice for his teammates, and won't even receive a medal if his teammates win. I hope Jenkins goes on to win a medal in the future; it sounds to me like he has a promising career ahead of him if he can work on his running.

In Jenkin's own words: "I am also going to Beijing as a domestique for Simon Whitfield and when the run portion rolls around, I will have done my job and I can struggle through the last portion hopefully with a healthy and pain-free knee". This guy is one hell-of-a sportsman in my books.

*Update: Simon Whitfield has just won the Silver medal! He bounced back from 4th place and took the lead with about 600 meters remaining, putting forth a valiant effort, but German Jan Frodeno made an amazing sprint at the end to beat Whitfield by 5 seconds. It was an amazing finish.

Positive steps by big polluters

Some of you have noticed over the last year or two that the articles on the Urban Country have been perpetually negative. The reason is obvious: I've been gradually losing hope for the human inhabitants of this world and the damage we are blindly causing. But that's not to say there aren't positive things happening to shift the path of our destruction.

Living in Toronto is a positive thing for me because every day I see people doing things to turn things around and put ourselves back on the right path. People have a lot of energy and are really embracing the whole "natural" movement. Directly across the street from my building there is a small park that embraces nature by only cutting the grass every month or two, giving the park a whole natural feel to it. Walking through this park brings you closer to nature which is nice especially in the city. The whole natural look is actually pleasing to the eye and usage of pesticides and lawn mowers every week is going to become a thing of the past. Also across the street, they are beginning the process of building a bicycle path alongside the train tracks which will be a very pleasant experience for cyclists who are tired of the constant inhalation of exhaust fumes while riding alongside the roads. Within 15 minutes of walking, I have access to more than 10 different parks, my favourite of which is the 37.3 acre Trinity Bellwoods Park, a short 4 minute walk from my building.

Some people are seeing the whole environmental movement as a trend that was proliferated by a group of neo-hippies or YUPies (Young Urban Professionals). Although I find myself particularly irritated by yuppies in general, I could care less if they are being "green" just because it's a cool yuppie thing to be green. If the yuppies are being green and the end result is positive for the earth, then the reason they are being green is irrelevant. The same applies to the big oil companies making record profits when gas prices are high; I could care less if it results in getting people out of their cars.

The original reason I started writing this article was to applaud the United States for leading the world for the third straight year in annual wind power installations. According to this TreeHugger.com article, an additional 5,329 megawatts of capacity was added in 2007 which amounts to more than 25% of all new global wind capacity in 2007. That is a remarkable achievement, even though wind energy provides a very small percentage of overall electricity in the US. But it's definitely a step in the right direction. Many politicians love to promote additional production of nuclear energy, and you'll even see commercials in Ontario marketing nuclear energy as "clean energy", but I wholeheartedly disagree with any claims of nuclear being "clean", and I would love to live to see the day that nuclear energy is completely phased out. The enormous damage that another Chernobyl-like disaster could cause to the earth would negate all progress that has been made since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

I'm looking forward to seeing more positive news coming out of big polluting countries (Including Canada). China took a positive step recently by raising taxes on big cars to 40% from 20% and reducing taxes on small cars from 3% to 1%. This will be effective on September 1st (Read the full article here). It would make me extremely happy to hear of Canada or the United States taking a similar step to encourage people to downsize.



(Image courtesy of Our World Foundation)

Don't Speed in your Racing Car Son!

First I'd like to send out my condolences to the family of the 3 young men who died in a car crash in Muskoka last month. The three young men were Toronto residents Tyler Mulcahy, 20, the driver of the car, Kourosh Totonchian, 19, and Cory Mintz, 20. Mulcahy's girlfriend, Nastasia Elzinga, 19, was the lone survivor of the crash.

Speed and alcohol were a factor in the accident, as the foursome consumed 31 drinks in a 3-hour period before getting in their car and leaving a restaurant shortly before the fatal crash.

Tyler's father, Tim Mulcahy is petitioning the Ontario government to crack down on speeding and alcohol, pledging for zero tolerance for alcohol and speeding for people under 21. With all due respect, and I truly think that Mr. Mulcahy has good intentions to help save other people from living the same fate, I don't believe that changing the laws will do much to avoid these types of situations. I believe there is a deeper problem in our society that goes beyond the power of the government to control.

Mr. Mulcahy purchased an Audi S4 for his son Tyler. This is no ordinary car. This is a high performance $70,000+ automobile with 340 horsepower, and an electronically limited top speed of 248 KM/h. In an interview with The Star, Mr. Mulcahy said "Parents need to lobby the government to make changes. We tell our children all the time - as I told Tyler - don't drink and drive and don't speed. I know that I have said this to Tyler over 100 times. Obviously that doesn't work".

When asked if there is one thing he would do different as a parent, Mr. Mulcahy replied: "Absolutely. I would not have bought him the car that I did. ... When he asked me for the car I argued with him incessantly and I finally gave in and I wish I hadn't."

I believe parents need to take more responsibility for their kids' actions. Kids will continue to speed, kids will drink, but purchasing a high performance automobile for your kid will only encourage them more. I understand that these young men were all raised in a very wealthy neighbourhood, went to wealthy private schools and probably had a lot of pressure from their friends to drive expensive luxury cars.

In my opinion, this terrible situation that these young men put themselves in is a result of the society they grew up in, not a result of a lack of government control.

Thanks iPhone!

Thanks to an uproar from consumers in Canada to pressure Rogers into providing a better data plan for the iPhone, I have now switched my data plan for my Blackberry from the ridiculous $25 a month plan for 4MB of data usage, to the $30 plan for 6GB of usage.

When Rogers originally announced the iPhone release in Canada, consumers were outraged when they saw the data plans available to Canadians included far less data than what our counterparts in the U.S. had available to them. So Rogers quickly adjusted their prices to avoid the bad press and the end result was a $30 plan for 6GB of data.

For those who aren't technical, here is a breakdown:

Old Plan: $25 for 4,194,304 bytes of data per month
New Plan: $30 for 6,442,450,944 bytes of data per month

Consumers do in fact have some control over the market. All it takes is some action on behalf of the consumer (Letters, angry phone calls, bad press, etc.)



(Image courtesy of SlashPhone)

California Dreaming

I've just returned from 6 amazing days deep in the wilderness on our annual Algonquin canoe and camping trip. We are truly blessed in North America to have these parks that have been conserved; for the developers would love to transform the entire park into luxury cottages if they were ever propositioned to do so. The lack of all things powered by fossil fuel is blissful. The only noises present are the trees blowing in the wind, the birds singing songs, the cracking of the fire, the soft splashing of water from a canoe paddle, and the odd human voice. Three nights ago we observed the most incredible display of stars that I have ever experienced. The entire sky was clear; our universe resembled that of which you would only see in a school text book. We witnessed more than 6 falling stars; with a special one leaving a trail of light in its track for several seconds.

Two weeks ago I was in California for a vacation where much contrast exists in comparison to my camping trip. In Los Angeles I was once again astonished (perhaps naively) at the importance in driving a luxury automobile. We heard a story from Han's friend about the friend who didn't have a job, but he took it upon himself to get a lease on a brand new BMW in order that he might fit in with his friends. LA society is unforgiving to such people who appear to be of a "lower class" so the end result is that you have many rich people driving luxury cars, but you also have (probably the majority) people driving luxury cars who are making average wages.

In a book I've read recently called "Oil on the brain", a businessman in LA said: "The amount of money I would save from driving an economical car is less than the amount I have to gain in business by driving a luxury car." You see, it's more important for people in LA to have the "appearance" of wealth rather than having actual wealth, as the appearance of wealth is a means that can lead to actual wealth. It was actually very troubling to me that this car culture still exists even with the impending energy crises at hand and in California, the state that is supposed to be an environmental leader in the US. San Francisco on the other hand which I found to be an amazing city, embraces public transit, cycling and walking so the flashy car culture is far less prevalent than LA.

I'm currently reading the classic American novel "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, a writer, philosopher, naturalist, scholar, historian and poet. Thoreau addresses these false needs our society pushes on us. His book's setting, a small American town in 1845 had the same modern day issues that we are dealing with today. Perhaps not surprisingly, I have many of the same concerns as Thoreau had back in the day and Thoreau would turn over in his grave if he knew about the path our society has taken since his death some 146 years ago. Thoreau talks about people living beyond their means to satisfy their wants forever in debt and always working to pay back that debt. He talks about the large houses and how people trying to outdo their neighbour, creating an inflated requirement to fit in society. In Walden, Thoreau quotes: "The false society of men - for earthly greatness. All heavenly comforts rarefies to air". On luxury, Thoreau says: "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way"

Being in the wilderness for 6 days allows me to retrospectively view my civilized life from an outside window and question the direction of society. The future to me looks gloomy, but man has overcome major obstacles in the past. It usually takes a major wake-up call or what you might describe as a "near death experience". I still see a lot of resistance from people who think it is their God-given right to live the lifestyle they think they deserve to live, but that will all change when people realize that our lifestyles are unsustainable in the long term. The materialisms in our society has swelled to monstrous proportions and kids being born into this lifestyle will only presume this is how life is supposed to be lived. There isn't going to be a magic solution to the problem except that we need to cover our needs and minimize our wants.