Here are some of the more interesting Google Maps satellite images I’ve stumbled across:

• Denver Airport
• Parliament Hill in Ottawa
• Niagara Falls
• National Water Research Institute in Burlington (where Dad worked)
• CN Tower in Toronto
• Experience Music Project in Seattle
• St. Louis Arch
• Brackley Drive-in Theatre, PEI

In our family the surprise is everything. Take any momentous occasion — birthday, anniversary, retirement — and our family is sure to attempt to build a sneaky surprise event around it.

Like the time Dad brought us all home to Ontario — from two coasts — to surprise Mom on the day she retired. We all arrived on schedule, and hid down in the basement waiting for her arrival. We heard her car pull in, heard her walk up the steps, heard her come in the door. She obviously sensed that something was up because she yelled out an inquisitive “Hello?!”

My grandmother Nettie, unable to let a greeting go unacknowledged, let out a tentative “Hello!” from the basement, and the surprise was uncorked. I don’t think she saw it coming.

Mom returned the favour several years later when we all returned to Burlington for Dad’s retirement party. With military precision we decamped from brother Mike’s condo and headed to CCIW where we descended on Dad’s office. I don’t think he saw it coming either. And we all got the added bonus of being able to tuck in to a cake with a picture of Dad printed on it — where else can you eat your Dad’s beard without getting into trouble?

These two joined the “surprise trip to Greenland” and the “surprise balloon ride” in the Pantheon of Rukavina surprisery.

To this point my most successful surprise for Catherine — and this was admittedly minor league stuff — was the time I phoned her from the office and managed to do an accurate enough impression of her Grandma Kerr that she believe I was she. At least for 10 seconds. It was sweet. And preceded by about 50 earlier attempts, over 5 years, to pull it off. So perhaps not as much a surprise as a clever deception.

A couple of birthdays ago Catherine Hennessey whipped up a good surprise birthday party for me; I almost ruined it because I wasn’t feeling well, and thought I’d phone in my regrets for her “dinner invitation.” Fortunately Catherine [Miller] jumped in and “encouraged” me to go. Ah, the boiled icing — there’s nothing like it.

Last night, though, Catherine pulled off a “perfect surprise” for me — a surprise 39th birthday party that I didn’t see coming. At all. Despite the signs, the obvious signs.

She had the advantage, of course, that I was away for the week, so she could connive and conspire without need for cover. So much of the planning went off in advance.

Saturday morning I got up to the smell of cake baking in the kitchen. I ambled downstairs to inquire as to the reason for the baking and Catherine told me she was going to a “spinners and weavers meeting at the Notre Dame Convent” later in the day, and had to bring dessert. I should have sensed that something was up when my further questioning about the reasons for this meeting — why at the convent? why so much dessert? — had fuzzy answers. But I came away thinking she was simply distracted.

Later in the morning, Oliver tried to tell me something was up: “birthday surprise cake” he insisted. I insisted back that my birthday — last Tuesday — was over now and did my best to explain that we all only get one birthday, and I would have to wait next year to have a birthday again.

For lunch Oliver and I went to the Formosa Tea House. I should have known something was up when they wished me a Happy Birthday, and insisted that Catherine had told them that my birthday was that night. I chocked the confusion up to language and didn’t think anything more of it.

My instructions from Catherine were to meet her at the house at 7:00 p.m. — after the big spinning dessert shindig — when we would go on our weekly Saturday night dinner and movie outing. I showed up a little late, with movie picked out and car at the ready in the driveway.

Catherine came out of the kitchen with a big grin on her face. Then Johnny and Jodi jumped out from somewhere. And then I noticed that the dining room table was festooned with all manner of desserts — everything from pumpkin pie to cheesecake to chocolate chip cookies.

It was only then that Catherine let the plan spill: this was my surprise birthday party. She was, I think, absolutely convinced that I had figured things out and knew exactly what was going on.

I didn’t.

I was completely surprised.

Catherine has now raised the family surprise bar to a new level.

Twenty minutes later the guests started arriving and soon thereafter our house was as full as it has ever been. Much dessert was consumed. Cynthia Dunsford and I got mildly toasted on a mysterious currant-based alcohol concocted by a hypnotist from Argyle Shore. My friends from the Formosa arrived with apologies for almost ruining it all (if only they knew the depths of my haze!). A good time was had by all.

Thanks to all who came, and all who sent wishes. And thanks to Catherine for pulling off the perfect surprise. I love you.

When our family moved to the small village of Carlisle in 1972, it still deserved the description “small village” as it was a sleepy residential farming community of 450 people, 30 minutes from Hamilton. In the intervening 30 years Carlisle has been heavily developed, with several large subdivisions of former farmland into modern residential developments.

Mom and Dad’s house — the house I called home intil 1985 — was built in the middle of the last century. It’s a modest single family home on a 2 acre plot of land. Throughout much of my childhood the family project was the planting of trees on the back portion of the land; the healthy forest that sits where a once was only a field is a testament to our labours.

When I was home last week with Oliver I had my first opportunity to walk around the new neighbourhoods that have grown up around Mom and Dad, filling in what once were farm fields. It struck me that their property, sandwiched between the road and the creek as it is, was a sort of “firewall” against further residential development. I didn’t know how right I was; here’s a screen shot, from Google Maps. I’ve marked out Mom and Dad’s property in red.

Go down and to the left and you see mostly new development in the last 10 or 15 years; up and to the right is still field, forest, and older houses. In a very real and physical sense, all those trees we planted as kids are now a sort of “last line of defense.”

In Air Canada’s new “e-zine” there’s an “article” titled “aircanada.com has your extra Miles” that explains how Aeroplan miles are awarded for various fare classes. It says, in part (emphasis mine):

• 1 Aeroplan Mile for every $3 spent on Tango fares
• 1 Aeroplan Mile for every $2 spent on Tango Plus fares (formerly Fun)
• 1 Aeroplan Mile for every $1 spent on Latitude, Latitude Plus (formerly Freedom) and Executive Class fares

It’s bad enough that Air Canada has a weird multi-level fare structure with weird nonsensical names. And that they then change these names. But surely someone there must realize that when you used to have a fare class named “Fun” you’re going to run into double entendre problems in future.

And so I begin the last year of my 30s:

Thanks to all for the kind wishes, especially to my “arch nemesis” R. for a generous and unexpected gift, to the brothers and parents and inlaws for all making contact, and to KD and Oliver for sticking with me even as I slide into old age.

I’ve learned some more about the Rogers Wireless “Pay As You Go” service:

• They don’t support roaming to the U.S. at all. There’s no way to request this, no way to turn it on. My phone here in New Hampshire currently shows T-Mobile and AT&T GSM networks, but I can’t join them.
• Similarly, you can’t roam on a Pay As You Go plan anywhere else outside of Canada. This in contrast to my experiences with the Croatian VIPme service that I was able to use in Slovenia, Italy and the U.K. with no problem.
• Calls are billed by the minute not by the second. In other words, a 3:04 call costs $1.32 (4 x $0.33) not $1.01.

Here is a satellite photo of Charlottetown showing my house. Today is the first time I’ve ever notice any service by Google actually being slow — I presume this is because everyone else in the world is doing what I just did. Very cool.

It used to be that it was worth my while to stay over a Saturday night in Boston on the tail end of my trips to Yankee to take advantage of the much, much cheaper “Saturday night stay” airfares on Air Canada. Now that this advantage has largely been eliminated, I’m left to enjoy the city in little time packets before or after heading up here to New Hampshire.

And so early this evening, after catching the end of the meetings I’d mostly missed at Yankee’s Boston office, I headed over to Harvard Square for a bit. I managed to squeeze some of my favourite things into a short space of time:

• I visited the Globe Corner Bookstore, which is a fantastic travel bookstore. It’s on Church St. just up the street from the movie theatre. I found a great book on southern France that I’d not seen elsewhere.
• I had a wonderful vegetarian meal at Veggie Planet, located under the bookstore and sharing space with the venerable Club Passim. I’m not entirely sure what I had — I just ordered the daily dinner special — but it involved brown rice, goat cheese, avocados and black beans. It was amazing. Also had a great elderberry iced tea.
• I browsed the magazine stands at the Harvard Coop and at Out of Town News, located across the street from each other just around the corner. Got a good map of France and a nice small Moleskin at the Coop too.
• I finished the night with some sort of exotic hot chocolate drink at Starbucks — it was called “Contata” or “Tochino” or something like that. 6oz. of chocolate heaven.

Then it was in the car and up to Peterborough, NH where I type this on the plentiful WiFi of the much-referenced Jack Daniel’s Motor Inn.

I showed up at Charlottetown Airport this morning bright and early at 6:00 a.m. ready for my 6:45 a.m. flight. Usually at this hour there are one or two people in line, never more than 5 or 6. Today there were about 25. I immediately knew something was up.

It turns out that our flight to Montreal was to happen on a plane that was to have arrived last night, but didn’t. So there was no plane. And the flight was cancelled.

Not that Air Canada bothered to tell us this: there was an informal information gravevine running up and down the line; with each new person to the desk we’d here a little more — next flight at noon, no compensation, lots of problems with connections.

I had the misfortune of being directly behind two groups travelling to southeast Asia. The lack of an early flight meant that their entire itinerary had to be rearranged. Needless to say, troopers though they may be, the Air Canada counter staff in Charlottetown aren’t experts at planning multi-connection trans-Pacific itineraries. It took awhile.

I finally got to the head of the line around 7:30 a.m. — just over an hour of standing — and was resassigned to a Noon flight, putting me in Boston at 3:00 p.m., four hours late and after the meetings downtown that were specially planned to accommodate my travel plans. I suppose I should feel lucky: the woman travelling to Vietnam was going to be 24 hours late arriving there.

All the while the flight information screens — still reading Standard Time — were announcing that the flight for Montreal was “Boarding.” Except there was no plane. And no flight.

As with most of my “Air Canada is evil incarnate” posts my chief peeve with Air Canada’s behaviour is their attitude more than whether or not they happen to have the right planes in the right place. Air Canada is as much in the information business as it is in the people moving business, but it doesn’t seem to realize that.

How about an email last night when you knew the plane wasn’t going to be there? How about an announcement over the PA in the terminal to soothe the jangled nerves of those of us in line? How about an apology when we finally got to the counter? How about flight informations screens that give information. About flights.

The impression one is left with from Air Canada today is that they’ll little concept that their customers use their planes to go real places and do real things. Things with deadlines. And hurt feelings. Things that Matter. They seem to think that if they get you to your destination, eventually, they’ve done their bit.

As soon as I knew I was going to miss my Boston meetings I immediately sent a heads-up email to my colleagues at Yankee, and then followed up with a couple of phone calls once the hour was more reasonable. Not a perfect solution, but at least I cared enough to keep them in the loop. It’s a shame my airline couldn’t extend the same courtesy.

Oh yah, the tomato juice. I’m not sure if this is a uniquely Canadian thing, but all Air Canada flights and lounges server Mott’a Clamato juice, which is tomato juice mixed with clam broth. I’ve never seen this on another airline — Catherine asked once on JAL in Tokyo and they looked at her real strange. The only time I drink Mott’s Clamato juice is when I fly Air Canada. Normally the idea would frighten and disgust my, but in the total perspective vortex that is flying, it seems quite right. The Extra Spicy is especially nice.

There’s an update to this story, posted June 2, 2005.

Although I bought a Sony Ericsson T610 mobile phone primarily to take to Europe, I thought I’d use the opportunity to also activate the phone on Rogers mobile network here in Canada.

Activation was easy: I just phoned Rogers, gave them the serial number of the phone and the serial number of the Rogers SIM card I’d purchased retail in Ontario, and the phone was activiated within an hour.

One of the things I use mobile phones for most is their ability to receive text messages via email. I’ve been using my Island Tel Mobility phone in this way for many years, and it’s hooked up to our network monitoring system here at the office so that I get “paged” in the event of problems. Although historically the Island Tel network has had reliability problems, these seem to have been largely cleared up as of late, and the system works well for me.

I was eager to try out Rogers system for doing the same thing. Every Rogers phone comes with its own email address: XXXXXXXXXX@pcs.rogers.com (where you replace the Xs with your area code and mobile number). So I sent myself off an email and waited for the T610 to jangle news of its arrival. Here’s what happened:

Rather than actually just sending me the message, Rogers sent me a “you’ve got mail” message, to which I needed to reply to get the actual message sent to me.

This is insane.

It’s insane because it means a complicated extra step must be taken for every email received — perhaps trivial for one message, but when a network problem happens I often get 10 or 15 email messages.

It’s insane because although Rogers doesn’t charge for incoming text messages, they do charge for outgoing ones, so to be able to retrieve an email message I have to pay Rogers 15 cents.

And those two things together make it doubly insane because the network resources that Rogers used to send the “you’ve got mail” message could have simply been used to send the actual message in the first place.

And finally it’s just another depressing move by a mobile company that doesn’t “get” that their phones will be used by more people more often if they build an open, flexible network that lets others build useful applications on its functionality rather than trying to replicate the “walled kingdom” of land-line telephony without wires.

I emailed Rogers about this “feature” and received this reply:

In response to your inquiry, our new email to text service, unfortunately, it is not possible to remove the alerts to receive your message, below, we have added the link to our website for the details on this program.

This isn’t a great problem for me — I just won’t continue to use the T610 in Canada once my initial “pay as you go” time with Rogers is used up. I just hope that my friends at Aliant don’t decide to move in a similar direction.