Parade of Ambassadors

When the ambassador was here, we had a good old time. The research team did in fact ask questions. He was good, better than most ambassadors. He came off as less of a toer of the line than most. He semed quite intelligent. Interestingly, he had kind of changed one of the things he said from when we heard him speak in Brussels. He now says that the government's policy toward Europe is non-partisan... whereas earlier he had mentioned a slight slackening of focus since the election, although Harper had been increasing interest. Seems like Harper may have convinced him that he's serious since the summit. There is likely to be movement on Canada-EU issues this next year, presuming the government survives, since most high level talks have been suspended since the Doha round has been underway, but it seems that the Doha Round is likely to offically die within weeks.

Next week: The Italian Ambassador. I'll have to ask him some hard hitting questions about the oppression of the Padanians, or depending on his place of origin, the inherent bias of the state against legitimate businessmen in Sicily.

Poker

The work at the poker establishment is turning out well so far. The main benefit is that no one else speaks Danish, so they can't tell what a butchery of the language I'm conducting. We'll see how long that lasts. Some day I can tell that one of the customers will write back and say I should have just written in English since I can at least spell properly in that language, and they all speak it at a university level. But so far not so. (Actually the poker set seems to be quite challenged at writing in their own language, so that might be my real saving grace)

The main annoyances are the Norwegian tranlator who works every day, so he hogs the easy Danish assignments, translating from Danish TO English. That I can do. But no, I get the Danish FROM English assignments. The other annoyance is that its one of these places that can monitor your activity at all seconds, so they're slowly clamping down on my visits to TSN, the mall, and the drink stand. Fortunately, they can't fire me (who would take care of the huge Danish constituency?), so they can just annoy me by mentioning these transgressions, rather than actually doing anything about it. Also, I have to get up at 6AM two days a week, which is quite a departure for the grad school type. It is gratifying to realise how much I've done by the time I usually get up though.

Tomorrow Ross Hornby is visiting the IES. He's the ambassador or "representative" from Canada to the EU. The research team is going to have to wow him with our incisive questions, since he's totally one of the people involved in the field of EU-Canada relations. We even vaguely knew him back in Brussels, when I talked to him for at least a minute or two along with six other cowed interns. He has a husband (I don't think its a coincidence he got assigned to Brussels and not Kingston) who was a super charmer — everyone was wildly impressed by his command of our names - surprising how little it takes to win people over. Unfortunately he probably won't come to the afternoon lecture for students at UBC.

Sunset

Its funny how these drizzly Vancouver days can turn out fine in the end.

UBC Campus with shipping to the right and the islands to the west.