What a weekend!

It was such a busy weekend, it's taken a few days for me to catch my breath and do a posting.

The photo is from Friday night, downtown Vancouver in the rain. I was on my way to attend the opening night of an opera (yes, moi, an opera!) at SFU's Experimental Theatre, a performance of 'air india [REDACTED]' a production by the Turning Point Ensemble.

Irish composer Jurgen Simpson created the opera, using words from Renee Sarojini Saklikar's children of air india as the libretto. The performance is, to put it mildly, powerful, with a full orchestra (or, what looks like one to my untrained eye) creating the threatening mood required by the story. This is, after all, the story of a plane brought down by a terrorist's bomb.

The mood is enhanced by the almost-eerie voice of Daniel Cabena, a voice that's classified as a counter-tenor -- to my ear, it could have been a female voice -- that's how clear and high-pitched it was.

But enough of the show. You can read reviews that describe and interpret it better, I am sure.

Saturday had been a day I'd been looking forward to: a symposium to brainstorm/discuss what the city of Surrey might look like in 2030 -- or, as organizers put it, a chance to play at being a city planner. Unfortunately, aside from meeting some interesting people, the day proved to be a disappointment.

For one thing I was stuck at a table forced to discuss a topic that would have been pretty much at the bottom of my priorities for the day (crime and safety, ugh, can you say 'Steve Harper' yet again?).

And, as I have long suspected, 'tools' put out for us to work with included Lego. I'm firm in my beliefs that too many of our traffic/mall design problems have resulted from planners using 'Lego-thinking' in their plans -- that they fail to consider how their designs will function once people and/or cars come into the equation.

Happily, I was at least able to end the weekend on a satisfying note, working on homemade Christmas cards with one of my best buddies.