My brother Johnny has the distinction of having been on the periphery of the season’s biggest earthquakes, one in Guatemala on January 13 and the other yesterday in Vancouver. Could Johnny be some sort of earthquake-attracting superhero?

We bought groceries at the big, newly renovated Sobey’s in Charlottetown today. One interesting feature of the redesigned store is that there is a woman who’s only job is to wander the aisles making sure that you can find everything you’re looking for. This is a welcome change from having to bother the stockboy who’s trying to navigate 320 cases of apple juice through narrow aisles.

Flying from Boston to Charlottetown on Sunday, my flight was delayed by mechanical problems for 3-1/2 hours.

This wasn’t a huge problem, as Logan Airport is only 15 minutes from downtown by subway, and so I could find things to occupy my time, but it did keep me from home. And had the potential to be yet another log on the bash-Air Canada fire.

Imagine my complete surprise when the letter pictured here (click on it for a larger version) arrived today — 4 days after the flight — offering an apology and 2,000 Aeroplan miles. I’m impressed!

Air Nova obviously understands that unusual episodes of customer service are opportunities, even if they are episodes of bad customer service. Here I am, basking in the glow of my 2,000 Aeroplan miles, quickly forgetting how they fumbled the announcement of the delay, how they kept people from meetings and funerals. And the utter insanity of having to fly mechanics and parts from Toronto to Boston to fix a plane. They made the best of a bad thing. I wish more companies would follow their lead.

I take note of the fact that local CBC website addresses across Canada are formed by placing the name of a location in front of .cbc.ca: toronto.cbc.ca, halifax.cbc.ca and so on. However the address for CBC Saskatchewan is sask.cbc.ca, which would seem to suggest a lack of confidence on the part of CBC mandarins that we citizens can spell the word Saskatchewan.

Earlier in this space I talked about how I’d been turned off by Hertz and turned on by Alamo in planning to rent a car this week. Well, Hertz came through in the end, responding personally and completely to my email about wanting to be able to rent a Subaru Outback. And so I cancelled the Alamo reservation, and I’m driving the Subaru. What a wonderful car it is: solidly built, handles like a dream, smooth ride, very logical controls. Only problem is that I bump my knees on the steering wheel every time I get in. And it insists on giving a little horn honk every time I lock the doors (nice in the light of day; annoying outside the B&B at 11:00 p.m.).

Good things are found in strange packages in strange places. There is a restaurant called Lee and Mt. Fuji in Keene, New Hampshire. It is located in a ramshackle old New England house, on the side of the highway on the outskirts of town. There is a roaring fire in the middle of the restaurant. The walls are stencilled tole-painting style. There is Mozart playing in the background. The washrooms are grotty. The staff is average. And they serve the best tasting, most interestingly presented Chinese and Japanese food I’ve ever had — including an overly complete selection of sushi. Thursday we’ve plans to go back to Martino’s — a great Italian place where we ate a couple of years ago — right in Keene; stay tuned for a full report.

It’s the way of the world, people do it everywhere, if you’re going to do it over here, then usually they do it over there, too. Symmetry is the way things have to be. So sings Jane Siberry. One of the delightful things about Charlottetown’s layout is that it is the very embodiment of symmetry, having been laid out in a pattern of four civic squares which surround Province House (“…firmly rooted in the City’s earliest plans, and… an integral part of Charlottetown’s image and identity.” says A Vision for Charlottetown).

The four quads of the City are bisected by University Avenue and Grafton Street and each is the core of its own neighbourhood. Reinvented’s new World Headquarters falls in the heart of this geographic confluence. You can’t chop down a symmetry.

Much is being said about Richard Wood these days, given that it’s East Coast Music Awards time. Most notable: he’ll be playing at Carnegie Hall (which my father pronounces Car-Nay-Gee Hall) on St. Patrick’s Day with The Chieftains. Back in 1994, when Richard was barely a teenager and I was working with Victoria Row in Charlottetown, we hired him to play for our opening ceremonies. He pulled up in a car with his parents in tow and fiddled up a storm. The Charlottetown Parking Cops were obviously not moved by his performance, and ticketed his dad’s car while he was playing.

I’ll be making a presentation at the 2001 conference of the Atlantic Provinces Library Association on June here in Charlottetown.

I need to rent a car for a week in mid-February, so I visited the websites of all of the major car rental companies. After looking in detail at all of them, I must say that Alamo comes out the best. They responded quickly to my online request for a Quicksilver Number — their “bypass the counter” program — while other companies wanted me to print out a form, fill it in, sign it, and fax it to them (or fill it out online for $50 at Hertz). Their new reservations system is dead simple to use: it took me about a minute to make a reservation. And, at least in theory, once I get to their facility at the airport, I just stick my QuickSilver card in, print out the agreement, and I’m on my way. Wish me luck.