Earth Hour

Makeshift candle using the lid of a jar and about a dozen birthday candles

Makeshift candle engulfed in flame

Downtown Toronto on Feb. 20, 2008 during the lunar eclipse

Downtown Toronto during Earth Hour

A disappointing showing by Robarts and Grad House during Earth Hour

I think the whole Earth Hour idea (where you turn off your lights and appliances at 8pm for an hour on March 29, 2008) was a bit of a gimmicky, silly idea. Sure, electricity demand dropped by 8% for a brief period during that one hour, but that doesn't make any difference. Congratulations Toronto on reducing your power consumption by 0.0009% for the entire year by turning off some lights for an hour on one day!

As for raising awareness, people that were environmentally conscious before Earth Hour, will continue to do the small things to reduce consumption, while people that weren't, won't change their habits. My roommate continues to leave unnecessary lights on despite sitting in the dark for an hour on Saturday.

I did however, participate, because, why the hell not. Blackouts are fun! I was rather disappointed by the participation levels as there were still many lights on outside. The big thing, comparing my pics of the Toronto skyline from the lunar eclipse and Earth Hour, was that the big office towers turned off their signs and they had fewer lights on. Other than that, there wasn't much difference. In fact, it's quite a bit darker out right now (2:30am) than it was during Earth Hour, though the Bank logos are disrupting the darkness.

Here's what I did during Earth Hour:

• Used my Forever Flashlight.


• Realized that I didn't have any candles.


• Created a makeshift candle using a lid of a pasta sauce jar and about a dozen birthday candles.


• Thought about what to do if my table caught on fire from my makeshift candle that erupted into a massive flame.


• Put away my laundry.


• Put away my Christmas tree.


• Gave up on the idea of stargazing b/c the sky wasn't fully dark and there were so many lights on.


• Stood on my balcony and took photos.


• Turned on the kitchen fan after I turned on the lights because my apartment was really smokey.

Commonly overheard

Conversation commonly overheard while in line for a club:

Bouncer: Manitoba!?!? Haven't seen one of these

• for a while
• tonight
• before

Me: Ya...

CN Tower Climb

It's been 11 days and I've had over a hundred hits to
my donation page after just having it as my status message for GTalk/MSN Messenger. I always wondered how many people actually click links in peoples' status messages. Surprisingly, I've managed to raise $100 so far without actively pursuing the issue. Now, I'm taking it one step shy of mass emailing and seeing how much I can squeeze of out blogging about it. This also has a reverberation effect because this post will also be automatically imported into Facebook.

Anyways, on Saturday, April 19, 2008, I will be doing the CN Tower Climb, where I'll be walking/running up all 1,776 steps (a total of 144 flights) from the bottom to the top of the CN Tower to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund to help protect our oceans and coasts, our freshwater and forests, and wildlife everywhere.

Please sponsor me

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Oh David Phillips...

I love this quote from my weather hero, Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips:

"My sense is that, in many ways, people are seeing this as our badge of weather courage. They want to say we got through it ourselves without calling in the army."

The reported total of weather-related car accidents from this one snowstorm stands at 1,700.

ECE

For obvious reasons, ECE, to me, means Electrical and Computer Engineering. However, apparently others use it to mean Early Childhood Education. This is rather confusing when you use this acronym to describe your profession. As a rough guide, it is fairly safe to assume the former if it's a guy, and the latter if it's a girl.

Bad drivers

Quotes from OPP Const. Dave Woodford, as reported in The Toronto Star:

"There have been 600 collisions on GTA highways since the storm began yesterday, including more than 200 since 6 a.m. today."

"Unacceptable. People just have to learn how to drive."

The Rapist

Whenever I see the word "therapist", I think "the rapist". Maybe I need to see a therapist about that.

Other random stuff that makes for good status messages:

• "Can you hold on for a second? I'm on my hamburger phone."


• Environment Canada is reporting that "another winter wallop threatens spring forward weekend"


• It annoys me that Mother Nature finally gave me the conditions to rollerblade again, only to take it away hours later with a snowfall. This is not the first time this year that this has happened to me. Walking sucks.


• Canadians use both their nick name and their status message on msn messenger as areas to use for status messages


• "Are you for Obama because you're sexist or Hillary because you're racist?"


• "If I were a waiter and I were to offer you two different slices of pizza and one was half Hawaiian and you weren't entirely sure what it was gonna taste like, and the other was plain with cheese and it had been under a heat lamp for 35 years, I mean it had seen everything, which would you go for?"


• Barack Obama is the real-life David Palmer


• From the Pickup Artist:
  
  • "Did you see the fight outside? Two girls were fighting over this guy named George..."
  
  
  • "I have a question of monumental importance.... do you floss before or after you brush?"
  
  
  • "I need a female opinion on something. My sister, she's only 18, wants to get a tattoo of her boyfriend's name. If I tell her 'no', that's only gonna make her wanna get it even more."
    
  • "What do you have going for you besides your looks?"
  
  
  • "Pick a number from 1 to 4..... Three. Pick a number from 1 to 10.... Seven."


• I should start myfreeenlargement.com to complement myfreeimplants.com


• Aspartame, sucralose, and all those fake sugars are crap. Horrible aftertaste and they make feel sick.


• Apparently I'm quite allergic to dust mites (cats too). I'm currently hiring for the position of hot French maid.


• Still can't take off my iron ring.


• I sat in the U of T Associate Dean of Dentistry's chair


• If you don't register your own domain name (like vincentcheung.ca), I will, and I'll post photoshopped porn of you.


• I'm debating whether to take down my mini Christmas tree, or whether it's close enough to December to just leave it up until then.

Tired

9-man practices have started again and I'm tired. Sore too. Going to volleyball clinic on Sundays doesn't help things either. That's 6 hours of volleyball on weekends all the way out in Scarborough. I honestly spend more time in that school that we play in than my actual school :)

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