We found Pachi

The last three months have been super busy. It seems that environmental awareness is at its peak around this time every year. I recently attended events for Earth Hour, Earth Day, and Environmental Advisory. The most inspiring part about the events was getting to meet people who share the same values as you and learning about their passions and projects. By people, I mean small businesses, corporate workers, spokespeople, and general public community members who partner together for a healthier world to live in.

There is still so much we can do to improve the way we impact the environment. Surprisingly enough, a lot of people don't know about current available environmental services and projects in their local neighborhood, like community gardens and e-waste disposal locations.

I hope we can change that soon.

_{We found Pachi at the EAC Symposium.}

My 2013 Winter Wonderland

This winter's freezing rain made it a memorable year. It proved that not only can Toronto and its surrounding area reach record high temperatures, but also record disastrous cold conditions within months. We had freezing rain starting around the evening of Friday, December 20, and it continued to rain once in awhile until Christmas. The result of days of freezing rain--ice. Ice everywhere!

It was dangerous to get out of the house a few days ago, because many of the trees were frozen to the point where they were breaking apart. Pieces upon pieces of trees falling on the streets and sidewalks, taking some of the power-lines with them. Areas with trees that disconnected power-lines left many homes without electricity this holiday season, along with the sad yet beautiful scene of torn and broken trees covered in inch thick ice.

Aside from broken trees and families having no energy for hours or days, there were a few other events brought on by Southern Ontario's icy conditions. I heard from friends and family that salt and firewood were sold out in stores, and right when they came back in stock, their prices rose. Would you be surprised if I told you that gas prices also rose during the freezing rain days?

I couldn't open my mailbox...
My neighborhood was one of the lucky few that still had electricity. My other family members were not as lucky: some of them still don't have power yet. One of my cousins and his family stayed over for a few days because they needed electricity to power machines that help them sleep. Another distant cousin visited a few times to charge his generator.

I found this holiday season enjoyable because I got to spend more time with family members I rarely meet, but I get the feeling that I enjoyed it because I had electricity.

If I had to summarize this winter season, it would be with: "what a way to end the year."

I hope everyone else in Toronto is doing well!

Heavy Traffic is Heavier

Rush hour traffic is ridiculous, I know. It is not a new form of annoyance, but it seems that it has reached a new form of ridiculous around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I am not a driver. I am, however, a transit rider and pedestrian. Okay, I guess it does not matter whether I am a driver or a transit rider. In the end, traffic affects everyone.

I was taking the bus home the other day and instead of the usual 1 hour bus ride during rush hour, I had a 2 and a half hour bus ride home. Traffic was slow to the point that the bus driver turned off the bus, got out of his seat, and announced to all the passengers that it would be quicker to walk home. A few of the passengers hopped off the bus and proceeded to walk along the sideways in the direction the bus was headed. When traffic started to move and the bus was finally running at [what I estimate was] 30 km/h, it was clear that the people who hopped off the bus already reached their desired bus stops before the bus, because we only passed by one of the people who left the bus.

Can you imagine all the gasoline people collectively use while stuck in traffic? That is a lot of money being wasted, and I am sure the drivers are not happy about the gas lost to idling in traffic. I wonder why the traffic is even worse now. Are the roads that badly designed or are there just more vehicles on the streets now than ten years ago? Maybe traffic is being more congested by all the blocked lanes due to recent construction going on around the main roads, or maybe it is a bit of everything. Today's roads definitely need frequent maintenance--they seem to be falling apart every season! It is no surprise that they get beaten up quickly though. They are exposed to more extreme weather like heavy precipitation these days and there are more vehicles using them. Five years ago, I would have considered the solution of convincing people to take public transit instead of driving, but it seems that would not help today. Getting people to use public transit instead of their cars to save road space makes sense, but it does not make sense to get people to use public transit instead of their cars when public transit is overcrowded itself.

Am I asking for more roads? No. There is enough habitat loss around the GTA, and we do not need more roads that may require more money poured into to maintain. Am I asking for more public transit lines? Maybe. It would help, but I can not see where the money to do that will come from. Honestly, I am not asking for anything. I wanted to share my observations regarding traffic and how it has affected me.

What are your experiences with the heavy rush hour traffic around the GTA these days?

Weather Changes

Does anyone get the feeling that the weather these days are unstable? Unstable in a way where it can not seem to make up its mind on what season it is. It is as if the climate is completely out of balance. This means only one thing: we have already past the threshold to being able to prevent and possibly mitigate climate change.

I am not suggesting that the apocalypse is approaching, but more along the lines of "we have to be conscious and cautious of the weather and how our activities affect the environment ever more now."

Southern Ontario Earthquake

It's not THAT big of a deal compared to other places, but in Toronto, a magnitude beyond 2 or 3 is a big deal.

I didn't even feel the 4.1 aftershock last Friday. I was sleeping in that morning.

I wonder how people in Ottawa and Québec felt when they had the 5.2 magnitude.

With all these changes to landscapes, chemicals found in the environment, and climate change, my forecast: expect more earthquakes in the future, Toronto.

Controllable Robotic Insects

If the world fully implements controllable or artificially intelligent RoboBees, there will be three major concerns:

1. The loss of all natural bees.

People generally hate or fear real bees anyway, so why not kill them all off (directly and indirectly) and replace them with these mechanical ones which we may control? North America's bee population is presently not doing so great, and it doesn't seem like governments, major business players, and the majority of society is willing to do anything about it.

2. Weaponized RobboBees.

Like one of the article's comments bring to light: RoboBees and its potential to become a tool for chemical warfare. Personally, I can imagine tiny blades on these things, making them similar to the killer alien insects from "The Day the Earth Stood Still," except they would cause a more painful and slow death. That or these bees may inject fatal poison of some sort. Seriously. Who is to say that no military super power or terrorist wouldn't want this technology? (Who is to say they don't already have this technology?)

3. Espionage.

If you were ever disturbed by one of those love songs about someone wanting to be a "fly on the wall" to watch you all day long, well, I don't blame you. I am sure no one wants to be monitored via a fly on the wall, but sadly, many people and entities WANT to monitor others. Well, there's one potential point to add to the list of "why I am glad I am not a celebrity." I get the feeling celebrities will be swatting flies often if these bees ever become a common technology, which if they do, you may have to forever lay low, be paranoid, and hope that things will turn out okay.

This post responds to this article: Flight of the RoboBee: Harvard scientists develop tiniest flying robots from The Globe and Mail.

Not the Evergreens!

Yesterday's snow and rainfall was so heavy that it pulled down the evergreens around my house. The evergreen in the back took the worst hit (but not as bad as our neighbor's). It looked like the leaves of a venasaur!

After patting the snow off of the evergreens, they rose and looked like Street Fighter Guile's hairstyle.




The branch reaches only so high after patting off the snow.


Looks like tonight and tomorrow morning's snow and rainfall will pack down the evergreen yet again.

Conflicts with Self

Being an anime-manga otaku is fun; you get to dive into fictional worlds and have many things to look forward to, such as new episodes or chapters, new series, the latest merchandise, and upcoming conventions. One of the biggest issues with being a big fan of anything in the pop culture department, aside from the amount of time and money poured into the hobby, is that all the merchandise and energy you put into it consumes a lot of natural resources.

When I look at all the plastic and paper packaging, character figurines, cards, manga, DVDs, clothes, accessories, plushies, key-chains, pencil boards, and ... (you get the picture), I think "gosh, this is a lot of stuff." Then I wonder if running out of oil would mean no more anime figurines, which I get the feeling it somehow will not. I wonder about how I could have had more classy and fabulous everyday clothing to wear that are not the regular T-shirt and jeans if I spent money on clothing instead of my hobby. I wonder about how much electricity I have used to read scanlations and watch episodes online. I wonder about how many trees and chemicals were used to make the vast number of comics. I wonder about how I could have spent more time with real life events.

Everyday I am conflicted about whether I should drop the fan bar by 90% to work on or get involved with real life issues like those portrayed in fictional anime and manga stories. Issues like government issues, environment degradation, resource depletion, drug abuse, social development, education, and debt. If I diverted all the time I spent on pop culture hobbies to real life problems since high school, I wonder if I would have contributed something greater to society by now.

..

It may be too late to prevent issues from getting more complex, but I suppose I can still get involved right now... after this manga chapter and paying off my debts somehow.

More Bins Please 2

Right now, Markham has the above two waste bins available, excluding general garbage. I'm not sure where the waste goes after leaving it at the side of the curb on garbage days, so I don't know how effective the city is with properly managing waste for low environmental impact.

Anyways, I sketched some bins with actual colours this time instead of keeping them black and white:

As you can see, I am not one who draws often. Hm... I forgot the Tim bin. Next time, next time.

October 2012 Morning

While half of the sky was cloudless, the other half had a cumulonimbus.

On my way to downtown from the GO station at 7:30 AM last Friday. It was a long day that day.

Reve tegro, Jo. T'degnah uo.

Defend Our Coast - Toronto Solidarity Event

While I was volunteering for Toronto's environmental film festival Planet in Focus, I was told about an upcoming solidarity rally against the construction of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. The host of the event is Olivia Chow, the NDP Member of Parliament for the federal riding of Trinity-Spadina.

Location: Bellevue Square Park, Toronto, ON
Date: Sunday, October 21, 2012
Time: 1 PM - ?
Event page at Facebook

I don't know much about this pipeline project even though it's been in the news often, so I looked at the project website for more information on it. From what I understand on the website, the purpose of the project (which is currently just a proposal) is to build a petroleum and liquids pipeline system between Alberta and British Columbia's coastline, and possibly ship oil between Canada and other countries across the oceans. It is a mega project that will [supposedly] create more jobs and bring economic benefit to Canada, but at the cost of potential local environmental damages to all communities, biophysical resources, and biotic life living around the pipeline. If the environmental damages actually occur, it would affect not only the local environments in its proximity, but the whole natural system on the Earth itself (because everything is connected).

Personally, I don't like the scale of this mega project. Forget about how long it would take to finish constructing the pipeline, the real question is can they finish constructing it at all? From what the media portrays and the people who I know, there are hundreds (maybe even millions) of people inside and outside of Canada who are against this whole project. Those people may be capable of stopping the whole thing half-way through its construction. It would suck if Enbridge started building the system but was never able to finish it; that would be a total waste of time, money, and natural resources.

The whole project itself is a good way to slap people on the wrist though. If we don't built a pipeline system to transport oil, where would we get our oil? I mean, I remember living in Prince George, British Columbia for about 3 months. In that short amount of time, it was pretty obvious that you won't get anywhere around that small town without a vehicle. Public transit felt non-existent, and biking or walking would take way too long to get anywhere. Heck, getting to the town itself requires driving a long way or taking a smaller airplane from Vancouver. What I'm trying to say is that people on the west coast depend on oil as much as anyone else in the rest of Canada, and we aren't going to change our habits of using oil-consuming vehicles in [most likely] the next hundred years. We also want our economy to flourish, which Canada does by exporting its natural resources.

To built the pipeline, or not to build it-- I don't know where to stand firmly. I am concerned about the environmental impacts, but I also know that people need oil for products and their daily activities. I will still attend this event though, because I am interested to see what they will do and discuss.

More Bins Please

I saw a brown bin at Seneca for coffee cups and I thought: what if the Greater Toronto Area had more bins than the blue, green, and gray bins? What would they carry? I could only think of an alternate brown bin and a Tim bin. The brown bin would be for burnables and the Tim bin would be for anything from Tim Hortons (except the food, since it should go in the green bin).

Too bad it may never work out. It's hard to get people to separate their waste.

Storm Water

It was raining heavily for a short period early last week, and there was something weird floating on the newly paved roads in my neighborhood during that time.

I took a picture of the roadside. The picture's not great because I took the image with an iTouch (behind glass too) and I was in a moving vehicle. The weird floating stuff looked like watery white foam. I thought it was soap at first, but after passing more than 3 blocks worth of roads with white stuff floating by, I had second thoughts about it. Does anyone know what it is? I can't seem to find any answers off of search engines.