The Owl Cafe

Tokyo is pretty famous for its cafe culture in a WIDE array of niches from maids to robots to anime to a wide range of animals. Being pretty nerdy and about to embark on a long bird watching tour at the time, our natural fit was an owl cafe in the heart of Akihabara.

We booked months in advance as spaces fill up quickly (even months in advance there were hardly any spots left) and were very pleased with our experience. The place was run by a married couple that clearly loved their 40+ birds. Entries were timed, everyone was quiet and respectful, and they had a system for rotating through the various owls to stop them from getting overstimulated.

 

From the owl "menu" I couldn't pass on "Mr President" the Malay Eagle Owl and his magnificent eyebrows. For the larger birds the owners not only provide a glove to keep the talons out of your hand, but a nice rest to lean on so you can admire the bird without worrying about spooking it. The two of us hung out agreeably for most of our visit but I was still somewhat startled when our time was up and he flapped back to his perch in the corner.

 

Kathryn was more interested in mixing things up, so after a bit of time with Gorilla, a spectacled owl (we have an affinity for these birds, having seen them in both Costa Rica and Belize) she swapped out for Potsticker, a tropical screech owl, who was undoubtedly a lighter bird to carry.

 

Tarpon Feeding

Steven took us to special places in Belize, both in San Pedro and Caye Caulker, where you can buy a bag of sardines and hand feed the local tarpon. Growing 4-8 feet long and weighing 60 to 280lbs, you have to be a little extra cautious in this process, just keep your palms flat as they really burst to the surface with force.

These fish are interesting for a number of reasons. Their modified swim bladders allow them to breathe air, surviving in oxygen-poor waters of brackish marshes but also leaving them tethered to the surface to breathe.

This flexibility around air also lets them take large gulps for short bursts of energy such as lunging for sardines, and this same jumping makes them popular game fish, although they are typically released afterwards as their flavour is not great.

We had our insta360 camera and an underwater housing along on this trip as well to share this tarpons-eye view of their feeding group under our boat.

Caracol

Originally thought to be a fringe player in the Classic Period of Mayan history, the city is now known to have been one of the key political centres. Located on the Vaca Plateau at an elevation of 500m in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, the modern name means “snail shell” on account of the winding access road to the site. The ancient Maya would have known it as Uxwitza meaning “Three Water Hill.”

Although famous for its altars and stellae, Caracol’s biggest draw is Caana, the “Sky Palace,” which remains the tallest structure in Belize at 43m. Designed with Mayan cosmology and numerology throughout, Caana has two sequential stairways to a top platform, which is itself topped by a trio of pyramids. The other major highlight is the celestial observatory, which still has the original wooden timber supports

Caana is a stunning structure to behold, but its tiered pyramid design doesn’t do it favors to the conventional camera lens. What looks imposing to the eye invariably comes out as squat and unassuming in pixels. If we’d had our drone with us we might have done it justice, but for now we just recommend everyone go see it for themselves.

Once covering 200km2 with a suspected population of 180,000, it covers an area larger than modern Belize City with double the number of inhabitants. Occupied as early as 1,200BC, Caracol flourished as Tikal’s main competitor, but ultimately collapsed with all the other Mayan city states around 950AD. Rediscovered by a woodcutter in 1938, the ruins were surveyed in the 1950s but major excavation didn’t occur until the 1980s.

 

Xunantunich

Xunantunich means “Maiden of the Rock” in Mayan and refers to a ghostly woman with fiery glowing eyes that has been reported ascending the stairs of El Castillo since 1892. As an indicator of how long the site has been abandoned and how completely the Mayan empire collapsed, the settlements original name is lost to time.

Strategically located on a limestone ridge overlooking the Mopan River, local Maya established control of the valley but were themselves vassals of the city state of Calakmul. Construction began as early as 200AD, halted following an unknown violent event in 750AD and then took off again by 800AD, ultimately outliving many of its rivals but still collapsing by 1,000AD and lying dormant until its rediscovery in the 1890s.

The core of the site is dominated by the pyramid known as “El Castillo” which, at 40m in height, is the 2nd tallest structure in Belize. Magnificent stucco friezes depicting the birth of a god and the tree of life are still visible near the top, with portions having been reconstructed for the benefit of tourists.

This focal point is in turn surrounded by 2.6km2 of plazas, temples, palaces and ball courts. As with most Mayan ruins, the remains of the city extend far beyond what has been excavated, offering only a hint to what the original city would have looked like.

The view from the top of El Castillo is stunning. At the peak of Mayan civilization it would have offered an unrestricted view to Tikal and Cahel Pech when all the rainforest now between the sites was developed farmland and city.

Access across the Mopan river requires a simple cable ferry, which is free to take but gives local guides an opportunity to pitch their value to you while entering the site (protip: they are worth it, if Edward is there, he is fantastic). The operators were also more than happy to sit back and let Kathryn take a turn on the crank to put her captaining skills to use in another country and kind of boat.

So what'd I miss?

That was a pretty wild ride wasn't it? If you lived in the same reality as me then you endured the same global pandemic, lock downs, travel restrictions, and general buzzkill that made us all quit trying to anything. Remember when all the buildings in your downtown were boarded shut and you couldn't sit next to your wife on transit? Not really adventure material I am afraid...

Another reason I have been slow to get back into this groove was a 3-year stint at a local tech company. It began as an incredibly rewarding and engaging place to work, but after we were acquired it turned into a capitalist nightmare. There were a ton of great people being run by a few monsters I'd rather not sacrifice further mental bandwidth to and both working there and then spiritually recovering afterwards required some downtime on my part.

 

So that was a little bit of a hiatus, but I'm going to make a sincere effort to reboot this little blog back into a twice-weekly log of our adventures and travels again. We shoot a ton of photos in beautiful and interesting places but only a fraction of a fraction of them are ever put into books, and those are typically hyper-focused to just the very best 10 per trip.

Like the above - that is a wonderful picture of us both that I will never find a better use for....

Paradise on the Coast

 On many of our trips to Telegraph Cove we buzzed past the "Paradise Mini Golf and Fun Park" without time to stop. Mount Washington was a far shorter drive and we had an early start, so there was plenty of time to stop in and play a few rounds while taking in all the obligatory mini golf nonsense landmarks. Giant shoe? Check. Castle. Check. Pirate ship? Check. Orca statue with lurid blue water coming out of the blowhole? Double Check.

 Lighthouse? Check. We have a lot of fun playing mini golf together because neither of us is particularly better than the other or super invested in the score (both factors I believe are the key draw of the sport in general) so we have a goofy time with generous opportunities for do-overs and the occasional fluke hole in one.

 Another key draw to the area were the bumper boats. Kathryn hadn't been whale watching at all in 2020 yet and the ferries were JUUUUUST getting started back up, so she was raring to go out on any kind of watercraft. So keen that she even brought her captains hat for a special photo op to sit and sulk in a tiny putput boat. The actual bumper boats are pretty fun and also feature a water gun which I was not expecting and which shot higher on mine than some, so I got pretty soaked and had trouble returning fire. But, being a glorious summer day, we dried out and warmed up pretty quickly as we got back on our way to the mountains.

Quarantined with a Kitty

My friend Serena is maintaining both her relationships and eye for composition by taking pictures of colleagues outside their homes, while maintaining appropriate physical distancing, during the pandemic. She asked us to participate in this series and was kind in providing the original files from her shoot for me to share on our blog and keep for the future. I really appreciate opportunities like this, since normally one or the other of us is behind the camera and we don't have enough photos of the pair of us.

On March 12, the entire office at PDFTron was told to work remotely until the ongoing Covid situation was under control. I felt fortunate to have job stability and to be working at a flexible company that could implement such a change quickly, but was also quite new to the position and somewhat concerned about meeting our ambitious next few months of targets with limited access to our team.

Kathryn was driving a ferry 3 days a week on the Sunshine Coast, which was considered an essential service, but neither of us were relishing the distance during such a stressful time. She had signed on to work that gig over the winter, with an agreed end date of March 31.

I have now worked for PDFTron longer from my home than in their office and everyone has come to terms with the challenges of distances. Kathryn is back at home, but her usual summer jobs are all scuppered until Transport Canada gives the go ahead. Even then, it will be some time until the cruise ships are in town and the demand for tourism is high enough to keep their services in demand. Throughout all of this, Wesley has been a total joy.

He is full of energy and affectionate around the clock, following us both like a little ginger shadow and making sure we always have someone to talk to. When we first got him, it felt like it was too soon but he was just irresistible, but with the circumstances of the last month he couldn't have fallen into our lives at a better time.

Farewell to Bardel

Today was my last day in the accounting department at Bardel Entertainment. Between working a summer during my diploma, and then returning after BCIT, I have spent five years there and am ready for a change.The hardest part of leaving after that much time is you know so many people that it's tricky to properly say goodbye to everyone - and it's important to remind some people that you're leaving a company, but not them. It's equally daunting to consume the sheer volume of calories that people offer you on your way out the door...

I have had a fantastic core of co-workers across Finance, Payroll, Operations, HR, and Production, so there were almost a dozen lunches, drinks, and coffees this week trying to fit in goodbyes with everyone. I feel incredibly fortunate to have met so many kind and hard working people over and hope everyone continues to succeed in their careers moving forward.

Anyone that has talked with me about work in the last few years has heard about my work-aunts and I was delighted that Sherna (who retired in December and never had to set foot near Bardel again) came all the way from Ladner for my send off lunch.

(L to R: Michelle, George, Sanja, Sherna, and Ethel)

 
I also made a point of taking the operations team out for beer and nachos since they work as hard as everyone else (if not more so) but are too often overlooked when someone leaves Corporate. I'm not sure if this is because specialized teams get insular or what, but I wanted to thank everyone that helped me succeed and you certainly can't work in finance without getting the mail and calls routed or having lights and locks.

I was very pleased that they were keen to spend time with me off the clock since I'm not sure I would have been thrilled about hanging out with a 40-something accountant when I was their age, but they were sincerely happy to visit and fantastic company with an energy an exuberance which was contagious.

My camera phone is old and a little blurry, but this photo managed to capture the primary character traits of the team in one go. They're a great bunch and I'm confident they'll do great in the future as they go on to bigger and better things.

(L to R: Sam, Kyle, and Andy) 

Purely by fluke, there was also a company town hall/Beer Friday on my last day, so I got a chance to see the whole team gathered one last time and signed up to work the keg filling pitchers for a chunk of time at the end of the day. There was something pleasing about having my last task for the company being bar-tending that I just couldn't turn down.

Kitty Cat Bath Time

 Kodiak has been getting pretty old of late and we decided that he was both having trouble fully washing himself and getting a bit whiffy in the process, so it was time to experiment with bath time. We had never tried such a thing with him before and we're sure exactly how much blood we'd lose in a fur-throwing frenzy in the process. Much to our surprise, he has mellowed in his dotage and, except for a few kicks here and there going into the sink, was VERY good about the whole thing.

 Look at that little face! He sat patiently while we washed and shampooed his back and barely caused a fuss at all.

 It is pretty cold in our place in the darkness of the Canadian winter, so we made sure to swaddle him in a few towels to keep him warm and help dry out. Once the towels were too damp we replaced them with an electric blanket just to keep him from catching a chill. Don't think we'll make this a routine event, but it was undeniably a success.

Thoughts Upon Turning 40

 Recently I was fortunate enough to do something which millions of people throughout history have been unable to achieve. If you haven't done it yet already yourself, I hope that you put in the time to make it happen eventually because it is absolutely worth it. I turned 40. I was also fortunate to have very kind and enthusiastic coworkers that refused to ignore my notion of not drawing attention to it and making a very special day.

 Key to the process was my dear "Work Aunt" Michelle, who made a truly monstrous cake for me. Take a minute to process it and I'll walk you through it. It was triple-layered with jam and custard inside and the whole thing was wrapped in fondant icing. And there was a bottle of Jack Daniels embedded in it as well. I brought through everyone in the company that I could think of for a slice and still had leftovers for a week.

 When I was younger, 40 seemed like such a faraway time and big number, but the closer I got the more I realized that most of "being a grownup" is paying your own bills and presenting the facade of having everything in check and under control. I also realized that I had shared about a third of my days on Earth with this beautiful girl and they had been the very best days of my life.

I can see how it would be easy to be nostalgic for childhood or the foolish indiscretions of a young adult, but honestly the very best years have been the recent ones with Kathryn, and all I want is to continue forward with my wonderful best friend for many more to come.

Travelling to Portland by Rail

 Getting from Vancouver to Portland by train is surprisingly easy provided you are willing to get started VERY early in the morning. The train leaves town at 6:30am and since it is an international trip, you are encouraged to arrive at least an hour early for ticketing and customs while some websites suggest an earlier arrival to ensure a good seat. Since we did not expect to be the only people going down for the eclipse, we were at the station by 5:15am and even that left us fairly late in the line. Protip: if you leave early for this trip, make sure you remember the delicious lunch you packed or it becomes the delicious dinner you return to.

 Once we were seated and the train was underway it was a very soothing chance to sit back and enjoy the scenery as it goes by. The trip is about 8.5 hours all in, but since you can get up for coffee and to stretch your legs anytime (except briefly at the border) you never end up cramped or uncomfortable. We had heard that the best view is from the right side (going south) and would certainly agree that its worth trying to get a seat on the seaward side for the journey.

 The train station in Portland is right downtown and we were easily able to start exploring the city as soon as we got off. In comparison, the airport is further out to the east and would have required a little more time tinkering with transit and collecting baggage before starting the adventure. All in all this is a very enjoyable and highly recommended means of getting from BC to Oregon.

Wandering Washington Park

 Somewhat confusingly, Washington park is neither in the city of state of Washington, but rather on the west side of the city of Portland in Oregon. Regardless of the unexpected given the location, it is a large and beautiful bit of land close the the heart of a sizeable city, much like our own Stanley Park. Near the train station, is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which does a great job of commemorating the people who served while also being a pleasant place AND including some lighthearted moments of Oregon history during those years to remind us all that real life continues during times of war.

 Next up, the International Test Rose Garden is apparently the oldest rose test garden in the USA, boasting over 7,000 plants from more than 500 variations. However you count them, the flowers in the garden were stunning and a delight to walk through, covering a large space to help diffuse the large number of people visiting at any given day.

 Also close to the main entrance was this neat old locomotive which I was unable to pass up the chance to have my picture taken in the cab of. Despite being decommissioned years ago and severely burned in an accident not that long ago, it has been very nicely restored and creates a great photo op.

An Introduction to Falconry

Earlier this summer, Kathryn found a voucher for a 2-for-1 raptor encounter, and we recently made the trip out to Maple Ridge to make good of our plan. For about 2 hours, we were able to spend time with a pair of Harris's Hawks, which are a neat bird native to Arizona and parts of South America. They are particularly good introductory falcons as they have a more gregarious social structure than most raptors, making them easier for beginners.

 The lesson began with an introduction on handling the bird via a traditional large leather glove. Their feed have a thong on the legs which stop them from running too much (Harris's Hawks have surprisingly long legs and are sometimes ground hunters in the wild) and help keep them tethered to your glove. Once we were comfortable with each other, we took a short walk through the forest to get used to the weight of the bird and for them to adjust to our voices.

 Then we had pieces of food placed on the top of the glove which the hawks collected in a series of short flights from nearby perches. It was very enjoyable to see them fly and to watch them land and eat on your hand (though you are certainly grateful for the thick glove). All in all a very fun (albeit short) experience which may have fully whet Kathryn's appetite to take a more extensive falconry course in the future.

Whirlwind House Guest en route to Oz

 My dad was passing through town on his way to Australia and stayed with us for a little over 24 hours. Luckily I had booked the day off once Kathryn suggested we have a bit more time together, so I was able to capitalize on the entire time for a visit.

 I wanted to have a hike somewhere that would be new for him, so we trekked up to North Vancouver and hiked a series of trails from the reservoir at Capilano Lake downstream through the canyon and ultimately to the salmon hatchery shown below. There were lots of Coho running and they looked to be in very good shape, so it was nice to see healthy fish returning to where they began to start the next generations. The grounds are quite informative as well and you can see into the huge tanks where they rear thousands of fry to the size where they are more likely to survive in the wild.

 We were also fortunate to have a nice close look at this little squirrel munching on some food quite fearlessly at the side of the trail. I would have taken a picture and assumed it was a red squirrel without a second thought, but dad mentioned that it might be a Douglas squirrel which is a more rare species on the west coast, and with a little internet searching low and behold it was. So a new mammal species for me to round out our walk and brief visit! :)

FINAL final

 In preparation of the last test I would write at BCIT, I took a wander around the campus and wished a fond farewell to many places that have been at the center of my day-to-day for a very long time indeed. I was delighted to find that the theatre in SW5 was opened into the same single room that I had mentioned in my valedictorian speech and I had to grab a quick victory selfie in the same spot where the whole process began so long (yet not very long) ago.

 I spent a lot of time chatting with and learning from my various instructors over the years, so it was very pleasing to go up to their floor and find every door closed and everyone away. With a new term starting in a few days, they'll need all the rest they can before starting another year over and it felt very proper that there was nobody left to tell me anything else before finishing my last test. To all the fine faculty and instructors on campus, thank you so very much for your time and attention while I frantically turned my career around :)

 I kept this pencil on my desk for my last few finals as well. It's writing days are done, but I felt it was very important to remind myself what this whole process had REALLY been about now that I was hours away from completing my degree.

 

Now I just have to wait for the final marks to be posted before getting ready for another 2 years in my designation.

Overseas Visitor

 My cousin Simone and I have always gotten along and go way back. Unfortunately, being grownups in different continents, its hard to find time to visit as often as we'd like. In the early days of working in film I would have a lot of banked holiday time and go to Europe every year or two, but trying to fit all your family visits into 2 weeks a year gets a little trickier.

 Luckily, she was in town visiting our mutual friend Riley and we were able to find an evening that lined up in everyone's schedule to have a meal, a few drinks, and a chat. My how we've all grown :P

 Kathryn and I haven't been over to England since we got engaged, but we're hoping to make a visit next spring. With any luck we can have a bit more time to check in and chat in the near future.

Deep Cove Team Building

 The Bardel finance team typically has an outdoor social event each summer as chance to have a chat and get out of the office. This summer we did a pleasant hike in Deep Cove through the forest and out to a lookout. The trail is well marked and easy to follow, but has a few steep points that are tricky if you're not wearing good shoes or are a little uncertain of your footing.

 We ended up split into a few groups of different speeds of people, but all reconvened at the far side to enjoy the lookout and have a quick group photo. For those outside Bardel, from left to right: Richard, Dan, Michelle, Sherna, Sandra, Erin and myself.

 The interior of BC has been having a tough year for forest fires and we've been under a cloud of smoke for a few weeks now, so the view the end of the trail was a little yellowed and hazy, but still a lovely spot nonetheless. Luckily the smoke is not so bad that it makes outdoor exertion unpleasant in any way but it does limit the aesthetic for landscape photography.