work, life, and travel
Being good Commonwealth citizens and residents of the United Kingdom, Sylvia and I are eligible to vote. So we tried some good old fashioned X-drawing on for size today as we cast our ballots for the London mayoral election. The polls close in 3 minutes. Let’s see if our horse comes in!
if the Daily Show covered it, then it must be news.
this was an interesting read on the FT
More cultural learnings today from the Aussie coworkers – Anzac Day!
Here’s a quote, to give you a flavour:
It’s essentially like Canada’s remembrance Day, except there is a significant drinking with veterans component. Or at least that’s what my Aussie coworkers tell me. Wikipedia sure doesn’t make much mention of it. But either way, it brought my Aussie coworkers to the pub a bit earlier today (is 11am too early?)
Interesting concept for a restaurant. Similar in look to Wagamama’s (or Salad King, the Toronto equivalent), but seriously the main dishes are just hummus with a variety of stuff on it (like guac, or chicken) and a side order of pita. Strange? yes. Tasty? yes. Will it last? probably not. 4 pounds for a bowl of hummus seems kind of crazy. Nice placemat though.
A million miles away….
Canada tourism sure does love to push the ‘middle of nowhere wilderness’ angle. In winter lake Louise was selling itself as this undiscoverd empty ski resort. I even think they said something about the lack of crowds.
Slight lie.
This one is more honest. Quebec has loads of wilderness.
I’m sure this guy has his poutine hidden in his kayak.
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Today it was hate. Victoria line suspended, picadilly line gets massively backed up ….. 45 minutes later i’m in the loo at work wiping off my back sweat with a paper towel.
Definetely hate.
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This weekend I visited the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. This was their last “open day” before the equipment becomes active – and radioactive – later this year.
Even if you’re not a particle physics fan, this thing is really cool. LHC holds the title as “world’s largest machine.” It’s a 27km ring of vacuum tunnels and superconducting magnets under France and Switzerland for the express purpose of generating two beams of protons and smashing them together at 14TeV to see what happens. Of course, it’s all under ground, but this is the area it covers:
All this can be yours for only €5-€10 billion
CERN is also interesting because a lot of technologies have come out of the research done here, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) used in hospitals and the World Wide Web (the thing you’re reading this blog on and download your porn from).
LHC was designed to probe deeper into the “stuff” the universe is made of, and will help answer several questions:
… or, it may just swallow up the entire Earth into a giant black hole. Either way it will be exciting.
While the site at CERN was very interesting, the logistics of “open day” were atrocious – thankfully their physics are better than their event management! They certainly weren’t prepared for the number of visitors they received; the event was insanely popular! There were people of all ages there and the queues were enormous. I got there early, but there was already a crowd of a few hundred people before the official 9AM opening time.
One of the many queues during Open Day.
In total I ended up queuing for about 3.5 hours throughout the day, most of that to see the LHC tunnel. Of course, the LHC lifts (to bring you 3km under ground) weren’t made to shuttle thousands of people per hour:
However the capacity problems were exacerbated by the interesting choice of the CERN staff to put every sign and instruction only in French. OK, fine, you’re a site based in French Switzerland and France, but when about half of your guests are from other parts of Europe and don’t understand French, don’t be surprised when half of your crowd doesn’t follow your instructions. During one tour a woman asked if the tour guide could mention some instructions in English and he said that “many people understand French so I’ll just talk in French.” One CERN employee called me a “faux Canadien” (in French) when he found out I was Canadian but didn’t speak French. The most entertaining part of all this was watching the crowd during a presentation of “introduction to particle physics” in French. I captured a minute of it for your enjoyment:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQTH0XfdEWk]
Good thing I already learned this stuff in University.
The first thing I saw under ground was the biggest detector at the LHC: ATLAS: a giant ring made up of 8 superconducting toroid magnets and the height of a 5-story building.
The pictures don’t do this justice: this thing is HUGE. It’s amazing that you need something this big to detect particles that are unimaginably small.
After seeing ATLAS, and a particularly long queue, I finally got to go down into one of the tunnels of the LHC where the protons travel before being smashed together in ATLAS:
Magnets chilled to -271C – can you imagine the electricity bill?
Another interesting part of the day was the computer centre. As I said CERN invented the world-wide web back in the early 90s and now they’ve invented “grid computing” to process the massive amounts of data that the LHC will generate when it goes online later this year. They had an interesting real-time map that showed where the data is being processed right now:
If you’d like to donate your own computer resources while you’re not using them, you can install the LHC@Home software.
Of course they also have their own data centre which is still looking quite empty as the continuously dropping price of computer technology means they won’t buy the computers until they need them:
Sure, it’s really cute until it becomes sentient and takes over the world
Ever wonder where the old equipment goes? I found this out back:
Let’s hope they recycle
One other funny thing is that all the streets at CERN are named after famous physicists:
Route Schrödinger isn’t always there: it depends how you observe it.
All in all – and despite the queues – it was a really good day. I didn’t get to see the ALICE detector, or the SPS, but I was able to go underground twice which is better than most visitors! It will be interesting to see what comes out of this experiment when they fire it up later this year.
PS: If anybody at CERN is reading this, I would love to come back for another tour! Just let me know when and I’ll be there. 🙂
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Are you kidding me?!? This my view this morning!! Snow covered cars, snow covered roof tops!
… What the ..?
… Sigh, and I just planted some fresh cillantro in the garden! Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device
Danny actually passed through town last year in spring with his wife Leah on his way to Russia for a holiday. This time it was just him and it was a layover during a business trip to Norway. This is Friday night, Danny, an empty bucket of champagne (because that’s how he rolls), a snipit of Jason on the right, and Danny’s violinist friend Julia on the left. This is shortly before we went for dinner to the Afghan Kitchen, down the road. Amazing food by the way. Like a cross between middle eastern mezze dishes and Indian curries.
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Excuse me, but i thought Bond Street was for ladies of leisure not ladies with lovely lady lumps. Check it out.
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Was watching the BBC show: How Do They Do It? today. I almost fell off the couch listening to the intro of todays episode:
Imagine you’ve had enough. You decide to get away from civilization.
You go to Canada
(I’m not kidding)
There you are in your log cabin … but you still need supplies from the outside world. Tartan jackets, Davie Crockett hats – that sort of thing. But the problem is most trade comes by ship across sea and rivers. But because Canada is so perishingly cold (note, this is word for word) … most of the seas and rivers are frozen solid for 3 months of the year. The question is how do you secure a regular supply of fur lined boots and lumber axes when the rivers are frozen stiff. How do they do it?
Canada.
It’s the middle of winter and the balls have frozen off every brass monkey within a hundred kilometers. In a nutshell, it’s absolutely freezing! This wind swept plane is actually the mighty St. Lawrence river one of the most vital trade routes in north america. Except in winter …
Crickey! I do miss my lumber jack axe.
I found myself esurient today so I sallied forth and infiltrated the local corner shop in search of some confectionary to easy the hunger pangs. I came across a display that I had seen a few times since coming to the UK: that of a British chocolate bar called “Yorkie” with a rather stupid tagline of “It’s not for girls!”
Yorkie!
For those who know me, they know I tend to be attracted to stupid local foods and drinks, which is why I have Pocari Sweat powder at my desk at work and used to stock my bar with BrennivÃn. So of course I coudln’t resist the attraction of trying a new local product with a stereotypically British name of “Yorkie” for only 55p.
The Yorkie in all its glory
Next to the “It’s not for girls!” tagline I also noticed that it contains 18% of an adult’s GDA of Calories. Good thing I skipped breakfast this morning, otherwise I’d feel like I’m being unhealthy.
But before consumption, I just had to know the back story Рwhy is Yorkie just for guys? Is it full of beer and foodball? Does it scratch its privates in public? Is it afraid of commitment? The Nestl̩ Yorkie site has this to say:
The ‘Not For Girls’ campaign theme for Yorkie uses humour, which resonates with today’s British male and simply states that Yorkie is positioning itself as a chocolate bar for men who need a satisfying hunger buster. With five solid chunks of chocolate, it’s a man sized eat!
It also mentioned that “Advertising reflected this with macho imagery – lorry drivers who take it one chunk at a time.” I can tell you from experience that lorry drivers in the UK are insane, so I can see how they want to take it “one chunk at a time.” They certainly drive like their aim is to take one chunk out of every pedestrian.
After being suitably educated, I cracked open the Yorkie:
So how is it? Well, like many local foods that haven’t cracked the larger market, it kinda sucks. It’s just cheap milk chocolate in a chunky bar. Somehow I doubt that today’s British men are resonating at the idea of cheap milk chocolate in bar form. Furthermore, it did not “bust my hunger” as Nestlé claims, as I still needed a proper lunch only a half hour later. But perhaps I’m just not man enough for a Yorkie: while I often enjoy sitting on the couch and drinking beer, I’m not watching football when I do it.
In the end I think I discovered why Yorkie is “not for girls!” Most women aren’t stupid enough to waste 55p on bad quality milk chocolate. Blech. I would ask Nestlé for my 55p back but I know I would just blow it on their “Raisin & Biscuit” Yorkie.
I was staying in the Radisson Shanghai the other week for business, and they had a rather interesting Easter display:
It was interesting for two reasons:
1) it was mind-bogglingly tacky
2) there were dozens of live rabbits and chicks
People kept coming by the display and picking up the animals; kissing and snuggling with them. So remember – the next time you hear about an outbreak of birdflu in China you know who to blame: the Radisson Hotel Shanghai New World.
PS:Â the hotel sucks – never stay there. The staff aren’t nearly as helpful as you would get from any other hotel in Asia and the heat wasn’t working in the guest rooms. Plus they’ll give you bird flu. Fun!
We arrived in Istanbul late thursday to the surprise that we needed to purchase ‘visas’ upon entry. A quick reference check in our lonely planet and we see it’s a 10 pound charge. Ok, no worries, luckily we have about 20 quid on us. We join the massive line for the visa (I think everyone on our flight had to get the visa, and was just as surprised as us) when we get to the front we see a list of countries and prices. UK 10 pounds, a selection of European countries 20 euros, USA … 20 dollars.
And the lonely kanada (with a k) … 45 euro!!! Each! Wow. What did Canada do to piss off turkey so much?! Double any other country!
How much for Canada with a c, I thought.
I did happen to have euro on me (I was hoping to pay the hostel in euro) and some how between a selection of british pounds and euro notes we managed to scrape together the 90 euro fee.
At least we had cash. Many people didn’t have any, and the nearest atm happened to be on the other side of passport control. Clever.
Still feeling the sting, we instantly bonded with another Canadian and shared a taxi into town still wondering, why no love for Canada?
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From wikipedia:
[The Northern Line] carries more passengers per year than any other Underground line; 206,734,000 passengers per annum. The Northern line has two routes through Central London and two to the north, making it one of the more complex lines on the system.
I may have been here for just over a year, but I made a rookie mistake this morning. After the precious Victoria Line became suspended I got off at Euston and took the wrong branch of the Northern Line, and ended up going 30 minutes out of my way. The infuriating thing is that at Euston, both lines go south! Come on London underground, did you run out of colours?! Why two black Northern Lines?!! You’ve still got the likes of charteuse and magenta to colour in our little map.
their accents are too hard to understand.
That is all.
March 12th. One year.
In many ways, a year already? And in many other ways, only a year?
1 year
2 different flats
2 different jobs
4 new umbrellas
9 countries
17 visitors
You know it’s been a year when tube names don’t make you giggle anymore and you acknowledge that there is a level of rain that must be achieved before bothering to take out your umbrella. I now like my beer as an ale, medium colour, kind of flat and kind of warm. My skim milk latte is called a skinny latte, my cream is soured, not sour.
Here are some more thoughts, in a list.
Things I can’t beleive I ever lived without:
2. The Tube. Love it, hate it, spend loads and loads of time complaining about it, but at the end of the day I still love the sheer amount of possibilities and the extensivness of the network.
3. Cheap flights to “the continent”. Most flights were on the god awful services of Ryan Air, but i still keep coming back for more because, well, I just can’t resist the travel.
4. Sunday Roast. And Sunday afternoon in the pub for that matter.
5. Pomegranates. Seeds removed from the peel, neatly packaged with a little plastic spoon? If this existed in Canada, I never saw it.
6. Weekends in England (Bath, Cotswalds, Oxford, Brighton, Leeds Castle, Canterbury, Windsor Castle, and that’s only half of the recommended day trips)
Things I miss:
1. Family and friends, obviously.
But in one year our visitors (for work or pleasure) were: my parents, Jason’s parents, Jason’s brother John, Scott, Dave and Kasia (thanks again for crawling on your hands and knees looking for my cats under parked cars, kings cross isn’t the cleanest, that will never be fogotten), Lindsay & Kynan, both Cerniks, all the Oxford ex coworkers: Jaime, Claire, Mike, and Shelly.
Lots of visitors makes it that much easier.
2. Having any sort of pedestrian rights. In London, they are non existent. In fact, I would say vehicles speed up when they see you crossing the street.
3. Closet space
4. Brunch (because I apparently I can’t help it. Everyone’s working for their breakfast
5. A credit rating. 500 pounds credit card limit is a cruel, cruel joke.
6. Owning property
7. Walking to work
What’s coming up for the next year? Lots of travel of course, new things to love and hate, and hopefully more visitors! And maybe some more cheese. It’s been a while…
It didn’t really matter which side of the Atlantic you were on, either way you had a storm.
In Canada it was yet another dump of snow:
(photo from Globe and Mail)
Meanwhile in UK it was gale force winds, flooding and one bad day for my poor umbrella.
(photo from BBC, obviously I didn’t take this in London…)
Anyway, either way you had one bad storm to contend with.
Unless you’re my brother and sister in law, well then you had the joy of both!! A 24 hour delay in Montreal getting off the ground, and another delay in London as you try to make your way to Italy. I still can’t believe you even landed this morning! The wind was insane. I woke at 3am to the sound of my recycling bin doing laps down my block. Hope you enjoyed all that time in the airports, see you next week!
Well, I’m back from what was a pretty short CeBIT tradeshow (I skipped half of it, attending just Monday morning to Wednesday night) which is just as well as CeBIT is pure evil. I hate the huge German tradeshows and their enormous exhibition grounds. They even let members of the public come (WHY would you come to a tradeshow on purpose!?) so you have to avoid moms pushing prams as well. Not much to say really: Hanover was cold (it even snowed on Wednesday) but the show went pretty smoothly. I’m glad to be back in the UK.
There is this demo that Panasonic does at every tradeshow – I must have seen it at least a half-dozen times myself – of rotating TVs. It’s actually quite cool, and I managed to grab a video of a small part of it this time:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atAzHIUVbr8]
Since this isn’t one of the big Asian tradeshows there weren’t as many funny name, but my coworker did come across this unfortunately named company:
Fortunately in German it’s pronounced “koont.”
I spent most of my time talking to the press and pimping Samsung’s “Ubisync” products that have my company‘s technology built-in:
ASUS (also one of our customers) had some new PCs on display that are made of bamboo instead of just metal or plastic. They actually look a lot better than you’d think! I like them:
Of course, we didn’t forget to partake in the best part of visiting Germany:
Next week: off to Shanghai!
Finally! after 11 months of living in London I’ve finally spotted a celebrity. Although technically I have seen the Queen at Asoct but I paid entrance to that and she’s not really a celeb per say. And again, technically Adrienne and I did see that host of some BBC What Not to Wear type show at a gastropub in Belgravia months ago, but that was a D list celeb at best. No … today I saw tabloid smut worthy celeb:
 Kelly Osborne
In her full red lipstick smeared glory, lunching at Cecconis in Mayfair.Â
It was her ridiculous lipstick that caught my eye, actually.  I work a few buildings down from this corner restaurant and pass it almost every day. It’s all windows the people essentially sit in a fish bowl, so I can’t help but peak in a bit as I walk by. Today, I walked by and noted that all the tables were full of business suits picking (and mostly drinking) their lunches.  Except for one table where 2 girls sat gabbing away.  Females, no business suits … flailing red lips … you can understand why I noticed!
Well, the girls (Jaime, Lindsay I know you’re loving this!) and a few choice boys reading this can understand why I noticed. The rest of you can’t believe the fuss over celebs, if you’ve even managed to read this far.Â
As for me, I can’t believe I care this much. I suppose I just think they are so funny, they are after all the modern day court jester. And I think the amusement comes from the thought: huh .. you actually exist in real life, weird.
 In any case, Jason, i’m sorry!
(and no … I did not sneek a photo. It would have just been too ridiculous!)
The BBC may say 9C, but it’s turned chilly here in London. I’ve had to retire my spring trench coat for a bit, dust off the old winter wool coat and even have soup for lunch! I wasn’t alone on the soup idea, Itsu a Japanesse noodel house in Mayfair (a chain I think) was packed with chilly Londoners. Mind you, some of the girls in line clearly don’t dress for the weather. Skinny jeans and flat shoes with no socks?! No wonder your teeth are chattering. And judging by the fashion jeans, I’d say they work in one the shops on nearby Regent Street not Bond Street. No, Bond Street girls probably wouldn’t be allowed to wear jeans. With rents of $1,504 psf (latest figures!) you’d better believe they’re too posh for jeans!
I’m in green park station waiting for the tube and I can hear the busker musician playing the theme to the Harry Potter movie!
Actually, I think what surprises me more is that I actually recognise the theme music!
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Saw this sign today in the lovely suburbs of zone 3. I guess here potatoes are considered green?
Is this a joke? How can you pretend eating chips (fries) is eating your greens?!
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Welcome to cultural learnings from living in Lodon.
What’s St. Davids Day you say?
Exactly my thoughts.
Explained to me by my friend, the girlfriend of a Welsh man, “it’s like St. Patrick’s day, but Welsh” . So basically a piss up in a Welsh pub where they serve Welsh beer, have daffodils all around (the national flower), play Welsh music and have lots and lots of singing. Boy do the Welsh love to sing. And to the untrained ear it doesn’t even sound like separate words, more like slurred chords. Even the English songs are tough to make out. Have a listen:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3NmBjjjhuw]
Bless their patriotic pride! Especially Paul who belted every song out.
By the way, biggest lesson I learned: Tom Jones is Welsh!
What we lack in trivia intelligence we make up for in luck. Well, by we I mean Adrienne and Jeff, who won a fresh supply of Crown Royal in the post quiz raffle.
As for the pub quiz at the Maple Leaf (worst run pub quiz ever by the way! it was more like a pub exam): it turns out that even when you remove the UK cultural bias and throw out a bunch of Canadian questions about Gordon Lightfoot and Nunavut Jason and I still suck!
PS: Nunavik? What the hell? There’s a new territory in Canada? You leave for ONE year and …
Seems my new job has me travelling to Brussels once a week. This suits me just fine since Brussels is only 2 hours away on the Eurostar and I live within spitting distance of the new eurostar terminal.
The Aussie colleagues I travel with enjoy the ride back to London by dipping (quite heavily) into the complimentary wine in business class. Hence the cute little nickname they have: Bordeaux express. Actually the Aussies love nicknames like the British like their tea (sigh, I miss tea time at work…). Everyone has a ridiculous nick name. My one colleauge is nick named “mammal” which at some point became “mam” , which combined with an Aussie accent sounds far too much like Cartman from South Park saying: “but, mo…om!” in any case, after i’m doing giggling to myself, all those nicknames make for a brutal first few weeks on the job. How the hell am I supposed to remember people if they’re introduced to me as: Aaron, james, Richard and Michael, but called: az, mam, tricks, mos…. Bloody hell people!
I’ll be curious to see what they come up for me. With a last name like slaughter, they’ve got lots to work with.
And no doubt it will be thought up on this lovely Bordeaux express!
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Which brand is the best? If you were given two random brands, say, Coca-Cola and Manulife Financial, and put them in head-to-head competition, which would be the victor?
Some might define the best brand on a set of criteria – from brand awareness to corporate valuation – and generate a global brand scoreboard. This would rank Coca-Cola as #1 and Manulife as somewhere … not in the top 100. Or perhaps you could run a poll and ask respondents a question like “…which three brands do you consider the best?†With this method Coca-Cola might come out on top, while Manulife Financial might be … well, not in the results.
While these methods seem reasonable on paper, they’re clearly biased against Canadian brands most people have never heard of.
So what’s a fair test for brand comparison? While scholars have debated this fundamental question for a millennia, initial data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN suggests the optimal method would be something like the following:
Whichever gets the most money is clearly the superior brand.
Fortunately I was fortuitous enough to be in just the right situation to test such a theory. You see, most people think you should throw out (or, if possible, never take) corporate SWAG, but my Mother knows better: they make perfect stocking stuffers! And as a result, Sylvia and I came into the possession of the ideal crap to peddle on eBay brand testing material.
We’ll need some help if we’re to complete our mission. Call in FUWA!!
Beibei the Fish, Jingjing the Panda, Huanhuan the Olympic Flame, Yingying the Tibetan Antelope and Nini the Swallow. Together they form, VOLTRON!! Er… no. Actually they don’t do anything. But they will help us sell our SWAG on eBay, as they’re the official mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olypics. (PS: Tibetan Antelope?!)
In one corner we have the green team, neatly decked out in Manulife colours:
And in the red corner, we have the heavyweight champion and maker of diabetics – Coca-cola!
Both teams will be represented by Fuwa. Otherwise who wants to buy a bunch of crappy corporate SWAG? If the pins don’t sell then the whole experiment is for naught.
Nini shows ’em how it’s done. She’s so good, she’s badminton.
Huanhuan shows us his O-face. O-O-O.
The eBay auction is simple enough. Just a straightforward listing with “{Insert Brand Name Here}-branded collectable pins from the Beijing 2008 Olympics. 5 pins in display case, as shown.” A photo (like the one of the ones above) is also shown.
So who will be the victor!? Tune in next week to see the exciting conclusion …
Nah, not really. The auctions ended on Friday. Manulife Financial won. That’s right. MANULIFE-FREAK’N-FINANCIAL! TAKE THAT COCA-COLA!!! And it was a commanding victory as well: the Manulife pins sold for a whopping 5% premium over the Coca-Cola pins. FIVE PERCENT!
The results are below:
Unfortunately the proceeds won’t even pay for my breakfast, but at least we know which is the better brand. Tune in next time for Microsoft vs Polka-dot Door.
Trip 11 out of my little book.
Going to Windsor was trivialy easy. Train from Paddington, change at Slough, and a 6 minute train ride to Windsor. Easy. but wait .. SLOUGH! I’ll get to the castle in a minute.
As a fan of the UK version of The Office, a stop in Slough is exciting. It’s like being on the set, my eyes peeled for Wernham-Hogg Paper Company. To anyone else, it’s a place to go to work in one of the many business parks or it’s a place to change trains as you make your way to somewhere better
.
Anyway, fun for me, but off to Windsor Castle. I can see how in the peak summer season you’d need a full day. Here we are in the absolute low season, cold dreary day in February and there’s still a substantial queue to get tickets, queue to go to the doll house, queue to the states rooms, queue to the loo … God the British just love to make you queue!
As for the Castle, well, it’s just a castle:
Well, a really old castle. Going on 900 years actually. And the Queen does live here (one look at the flag and we noted she was indeed in today). The Doll House was completely ridiculous. Built in the 1920’s it’s the size of our old Smart Car, and includes such ridiculous things like running water. Inside the castle proper, an extremely long audio tour takes you through the States Rooms which is a series of drawing, sitting, dining, dressing, and sleeping rooms. The art collection is impressive, the royals seem to have a fondness for Rembrandt. As do they have a fondness for self portraits. But I guess, back in the day, an oil painting was their version of a family photo album.
The most impressive room inside hands down goes to the one with all the weapons. This houses a massive collection of swords, riffles and daggers. Many of them are excessively decorated, and many are the spoils of the empire’s conquests.
In all, it takes a few hours to get through the castle and finally to the chapel. I found this picture on wikipedia:
From the air, you can really see how massive this place is!
Outside the castle, a kitchy town thrives on the hoards of tourists. We stopped for tea and noted that aside from the staff we were the only ones speaking English.
Across the river we popped into the town of Eton to have a look. It’s a famous private school (oddly called public by the brits. At &;pound24,000 a year tution, tell me HOW is that public!) . Through out most of the year the campus is open to visitors, but during the winter months it’s closed. Probably something about needing to study ..
That’s ok. Judging by the college chapel I’m not too sad:
I’m beginning to see a theme in the architecture of these buildings …
I’ve suspected it for a while, but this cements it: Stephen Harper needs to go.
http://rickmercer.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/2/20
So what happened this past week when these Canadian scientists came to Parliament Hill for a reception in their honour with their Nobel prize tucked up underneath their arms? The Prime Minister, the guy who’s job it is to represent us at these things refused to attend. The Canadian cabinet refused to attend. And why? Because these scientists, who – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not – won the Nobel Peace Prize, had the gall to do it by formulating a plan to fight climate change. And my guess is it doesn’t call for an increase in oil sands production. So as a result, not a single cabinet minister would cross the hall and shake their hands.
Sigh.
