If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
It was crisp and gloriously bright day in early January in Vancouver — the perfect conditions for outdoor chores like taking down Christmas lights. Or, in my case, it also meant grabbing tongs and a pail to scour my block for coffee cups, bus tickets, plastic packaging, as well as used condoms and discarded bags of dog feces.
There are hundreds of thousands of tenants in B.C. and dozens of them face eviction every day for highly sympathetic reasons. Their income is interrupted so they can't pay rent; their housing subsidy is cut off; their landlord decides it needs them out in order to do renovations. Tenants facing eviction should not all be tarred by the same brush.
One Million Moms for Gun Control was created in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and helping them raise crucial funds is a Vancouver innovation. The word is spreading quickly, and not surprisingly social media playing a key role in raising awareness. Awareness is good, but funding is vital sustenance.
Last night by chance, I sat next to George who's been travelling across Western Canada with Oprah Winfrey for her inspirational speaking tour. "Every night is not the same experience. Interviewing an interviewer is so much fun especially when you're talking to someone like Oprah. Every now and then, when I'm on stage with her, it dawns on me that she's Oprah Winfrey," he said.
I don't know John Furlong. What I do know is that once again, without knowing the facts, the character and hard-won reputation of a human being is being ripped to pieces and likely irreparably damaged. Nevertheless, it is treated as bombshell "news," and reported as such. Even worse, journalists pretend -- or at least may have convinced themselves -- that repeating them is somehow in the "public interest." What is happening to Furlong is a nothing less than a public lynching.
Timing is everything in B.C. politics. And wouldn't you know, it's also the essence of thousands of Bollywood films. A chance meeting that develops into forbidden love? Bollywood. The moment the evil uncle clunks granny on the head and makes off with the family fortune, leaving the heroine a pauper? Bollywood. But who thought India's prolific Hindi film industry would be at the centre of a dramatic saga of its own, playing out on location over the next five months across British Columbia's political soundstage?
While China's policy change has impacted investors' cash flow in the short term, it hasn't curbed their enthusiasm for Vancouver real estate. The sudden rise and fall in real estate prices that we're seeing now in China, as well as fluctuations in the overall economy, mean that people view investing there as no less risky than placing bets on a baccarat table. For many Chinese investors, parking money in Vancouver feels as safe as investing in treasury bills.
The B.C. premier announced this week Metro Vancouver will host the Times of India Film Awards. Reactions within the South Asian community are mixed; some are touting it as a political ploy to gain South Asian votes. What remains to be seen is if the community and businesses at large will be able to tap into the longer term business opportunities an event of this nature can provide.
My Oprah confession: I would do anything for a chance to meet her. I'd wear a Tina Turner wig for a year, I'd eat a 67-pound wagon worth of fat, or I'd quit my radio job for a chance to ugly cry in front of my television hero: Oprah Winfrey.
Not only are buses not designed for strollers (especially folded up), our culture is not designed for it either. People on buses and the Skytrain are not very friendly. They don't appreciate anyone who is not fully compact with those annoying backpacks and totally tuned out on their iPods. Anyone with wheelchairs, bikes, packages or babies are considered an infringement on their right to travel without acknowledging those around them.
A decade of feminism couldn't explain why the Married Man spooked me and how let down I felt by my female co-workers who excused his behaviour. Why were we divided? Most of all, I was disillusioned with myself; if I couldn't hold my own against the Married Man and sway my co-workers to side with me, what right did I have to call myself a feminist?
Since when did adults take their morality cues from teenagers still in high school? Students from a B.C. high school want to shut down a strip club because they say it objectifies women. But therein lies the problem, they clearly forgot to ask the women that work there if they feel they're been objectified.
We gather in the practice kitchen, a specifically built replica of the competition kitchen in Lyon. Like a sprinter launching out of the blocks, as if to cheat time, Chef Alex Chen heats pans on the induction burners while butchering oxtail and peeling the beef tenderloin...
Never in my 18 years in radio did I ever think that I'd become the story, especially about something that I thought was a cheeky, throwaway question to B.C. Premier Christy Clark: "What's it like being a MILF?" The question was laughed at, then answered, and that was that. There's a fine line in radio, and if you cross it all hell can break loose, I crossed that line — well, that station's version of the line anyway.
The worry of those who promote and teach about kink is that those reading Fifty Shades Of Grey will dive into recreating the relationships within it. Relationships that if they were taking place in real life wouldn't be viewed as kinky, fun and romantic, but as abusive, emotionally if not physically. Fortunately there are those more than willing to correct the inaccuracies in the book for those looking to discover the real world of BDSM.
So f*$k online dating. Don't spend another second milling about your flat, fiddling with your profile picture. Instead, get out of your comfort zone and meet some new people. This could mean sitting at a bar on your own or travelling across town to a new watering hole. Ditch your regular routine, smile at strangers and make eye contact. Engage with living and breathing human beings!
