Finally!

The Olympics begin tomorrow.

It’s a little surreal, for as long as I’ve lived here it’s been the great imminent event that has eclipsed almost everything else.

I went for a little walk this afternoon during lunch and the city was abuzz with activity.

It’s like our population doubled overnight, there’re people everywhere!

The Olympic Torch is making its way downtown; I plan on seeing the relay tonight.

Hopefully it gets cold enough to wear my red mittens.

My first thought after seeing this Tourism BC Ad (featuring Michael J. Fox, Ryan Reynolds, Erick McCormack, Kim Cattrall, Steve Nash, and Sarah McLachlan) was;

“Oh my God, I want to live there!”

Except, I already live here!

The Ad is just in time for the winter Olympics which is a surprising 20 days away.

The Olympic torch has made it’s way throughout the country and it’s finally here in BC.

Most of us have come around to being excited about the games.

It’s a nice afternoon, I’m think I’m going to go ride the Olympic Line streetcar to Grandville Island and take some pictures.

There’s an old Akan adage, which I’ll paraphrase as thus “You don’t rush out to meet with festivities that’s coming to your house”.

It’s intended to encourage patience, patience for those things that’ll eventually come to us.

I was oddly reminded of that saying the first time I saw the 2010 Winter Olympics countdown clock.

A dad taking photos of his little girl tried to distract her by asking how old she’d be come February 2010.

The girl steadied herself for a moment, with her mom’s help counted on her fingers and shouted excitedly “I’ll be nine!”

Her older brother says with an incredulous look, “But, that’ll take forever!”

1092 days seemed so very far away.

2010 seemed like a lifetime to come.

I’ve passed by the clocked several times in almost three years that it’s been counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds.

A lot has happened since then, and yet some things have remained the same.

I’m beginning to think that maybe 2010 didn’t seem so far away after all.

It’s only two months away now.

I guess it’s time to look beyond when the clock stops counting down… because that’s inevitable.

The One of a Kind Show came to the Vancouver Convention Centre last month.

This was its second year in Vancouver; having missed it last year I quite looked forward to going this year.

We spent the evening browsing rows and rows of unique and beautiful crafts, beautiful clothing, gorgeous jewellery and home and lifestyle products.

It was rather nice discovering local BC artists whom I didn’t even know existed, and of course talented artists from all over North America.

It was a beautiful show.

These adorable hand-printed linen baby slings from Ollie Golightly were quite a hit

That’s Pook the monkey from Pook Toques, that was a hit too.

I really wish the show was in December or closer to Christmas, the beginning of October is too early for me to start Christmas shopping.

I can totally see myself doing all my Christmas shopping here, my presents would have been unique and cool.

(more…)

The African Peace Festival has been going on every year for the past four years, and for some strange reason, I’d never heard of it until recently. What kind of African am I?

As luck would have it, I met one of the performers weeks earlier at the jazz festival who promised it’ll be fun.

The festival is organized by the African Peace Forum Society to raise funds ‘for a grassroots humanitarian project in Africa which is selected annually’.

This year’s festival was held at the Roundhouse Community Centre on the 18^th of July. I went there not exactly sure what to expect.

I imagined a peace festival would be a conference style sort of atmosphere with workshops and possibly breakout sessions where there’ll be lots of vague talk about how to bring peace to ‘Africa’. This isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully, it wasn’t anything like I imagined. It was a market place with a performance stage and seating area in the middle. I really liked the set up because I could browse, watch and listen to the performances too.

The market place featured an array of interesting vendors;

Pathfinder Press publishes writings and speeches from revolutionists like Thomas Sankara.

Afri-Pads is a Ugandan based organization that sews and distributes washable menstrual pads to girls in rural Uganda – it’s such an exceptional enterprise.

Performances included a poetry slam, musical acts and an acrobat dancer. Saw the Raging Grannies!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the whole event because I had to be at the Folk Festival.

It was� overall great fun; I’m glad I was there,� saw some old friendly faces and discovered new ones.