Something weird just happened: the speed of my high-speed Internet connection just increased by a factor of about 4. I’m watching full-screen QuickTime video that looks much, much better than it usually does. I’m zipping files down over the Internet at 260KB per second. Am I hallucinating? Perhaps I should go to bed. But I’m afraid that things will go back to “normal” when I wake up. Help!

Here’s are the cliques I’ve of been a member of so far in this life.

In very early elementary school, I was the “new kid” because our family moved out to the country after I was in grade one, and so I started a new school for grade two. All of my schoolmates had known each other for two or three years already, and I was late to the party. It’s amazing what a dramatic effect this has had on my life, both positive and negative.

Later in elementary school, partly as a result of this, I was a member of the “loner guys.” We loners generally remained un-derided and un-teased by staying under the radar. This was a loose affiliation with an flexible group of other “loner guys” on the playground; sort of the playground equivalent of running as an independent candidate for U.S. President.

I stayed a “loner guy” all the way through elementary school, and through junior high. At its best this meant being a “lone wolf,” and at its worst it meant I was lonely.

In the last year of junior high — grade 8 — I was branded a “browner” because I was pulled out of regular classes a day every week for “gifted and talented group” activities. Can you imagine the stupidity of the bureaucracy that came up with that name?

In high school I was one of the “early bus euchre groupies.” High school started at 9:00 a.m., but buses arrived at our high school from abour 8:00 a.m. onwards. My bus was an early bus, and so I became a B-list member of a group of guys who gathered in the cafeteria every morning to play euchre. I was never allowed to actually play euchre, which was probably good, because it allowed me to maintain the veneer of being unaffiliated.

Later in high school I graduated to the “very slightly cool geeky guys.” I was President of the Computer Club for two years in the middle of my time at high school. Although this carried with it the same inevitable taint that being in “projector club’ would have carried, my Vice-President Simon and I managed to make the best of a bad thing by producing ever-more-outrageous announcements that we convinced our Vice-Principal Mr. Japp to play over the Public Address system every morning. Our tag line was “The Computer Club: Where the Future is Today.” I think we got cut off when our announcements, which often involved sound effects, music, and location recording, extended over the 5 minute mark.

On the first night of my one-year stay at Trent University, I went to a social event held in the riverside quadrangle. I was socially ill at ease, but tried to do my best. I guy from a neighbouring residence and I made small talk; he was going to the bar, and asked me if I wanted anything. I said “no, I don’t drink; I’m into Coke.” I never saw him again, and didn’t realize until much later that he probably thought me a n’er do well druggie. I generally remained completely aloof at Trent. I was housed in “staircase K/L” at Champlain College, on a floor the other residents of which were all third-year women. I was terrified of them, although they were very nice to me.

When I left university, I joined up with the a rag-tag group of anarchists, socialists and libertarians organized under the banner of “Projects for Change.” They were mostly older and wiser than me, but were a great and passionate group of people. I hung with and around them for almost 5 years. Under this banner I was a member of, a variety of splinter and side groups, including the Community Information Agency (CIA), Oxfam-Peterborough, the NDP (although only on the distant fringes; I was never a member), the “Fuck School” project (a long story), Powerless Books, the Peterborough Food Bank, and the Kawartha World Issues Centre. I headed up a campaign to bring full CBC Television service to Charlottetown, commited one act of civil disobedience, and was questioned once by the police. The common thread running through all of this activity was a general feeling about the need for “social change” of some description; the nature and degree of change required varied greatly depending on the players. In any case, there was a very clear distinction, socially, between us and the “regular straight people.”

I had a very brief time as a member of the “cool musicians” group in Peterborough, although mostly in my own mind, and really only then for about a week.

Moving to the Island, and having a wonky ethnic last name, automatically gained me free membership in the “vaguely suspected of being a terrorist” group, although never as severely as Island detractors made it out to be. After about five years of being here, I sensed a subtle “well, maybe he’s not a terrorist” change, although after we painted our house in Kingston bright yellow, Catherine did stop getting invited to the WI Christmas party, and there was a rumour that we might be “Catholic or French, or both.”

But seriously: when we were considering moving to the Island, we were warned, mostly by people who had never been here before, that this was a closed, insular place, where we would have no friends and always be on the outside. This has proved both completely true and completely false.

The last ten years here we have benefitted greatly from the kindness of our friends and neighbours in ways we never could have imagined when living in Ontario. Islanders have employed us, invited us to dinner, plowed out our driveway, lent us their table saws, cared for our son.

However it’s only this year that I came to realize that although we are accepted here, and can dwell here happily until our end, we will never be of here. I used to think, when people told me this, they were talking about some sort of secret conspiracy, a basic distrust, or a mystical quality; I’ve come to realize that mostly what this is about is time. The born-and-bred Islanders that I know and observe simply benefit from having know each other not only since Kindergarten, but also, family-to-family, for several generations. It’s simply not possible, being late to the party, to build the kind of relationships that are this deep; I’ll just never know all the stories, and the stories are what’s important. In a sense, it’s the same phenomenon I experienced in grade two as the “new kid,” and it’s got the same upsides and downsides associated with it.

Aside from all that, I guess the strongest affiliation I have here is with a rag-tag group that would probably best be called “mildly rebellious non-joiner designers.” By our very nature, we have no formal affiliation, don’t hold meetings (well, sometimes we hold meetings), and resist any rituals.

I also have associate membership in the “independent entrepreneurs” group, although I’m less entrepreneurial than the charter members, only employ one other person (and he’s my brother), and don’t drink coffee. It’s amazing the degree to which this group holds common beliefs with the hippies and anarchists from back in the day.

So the common thread, reading backwards as I write, is an affiliation with the unaffiliated, an appreciation for the rebels, and a position just on the cusp of the inside/outisde fence.

Not a bad place to be.

I was sitting in the Formosa Tea House just a minute ago, and a group of young people came and sat at the table behind me. Unable to keep from eavesdropping, I heard one say to the other “what’s your trad?” The answer appeared to suggest that all three were practioners of and/or adherents to some sort of wican system, and the “trad” was a reference to which branch, or “tradition” thereof. After this small learning opportunity, their conversation descended into small talk about who should get fixed up with who. Apparently everyone has a code name in this group. Fascinating.

A standard ISO 20 foot freight container has inside dimensions of 19’5” (length) by 7’8” (wide) by 7’9.5” (high). The container itself weighs 4189 pounds, and has a dry capacity of 48,721 pounds, and a volume of 1,165 cubic feet. These are immutable facts, set by the International Organization for Standardization. You can purchase a handbook from the ISO that tells you everything you want to know about shipping containers.

To send a 20 foot container full of food from the U.S. east coast to the port of Rotterdam costs about $1700 US.

The “founding father of the freight container” was Malcolm McLean, who died in 2001. In a tribute to McLean, United States Commissioner of Customs, Robert C. Bonner related the history:

Malcolm McLean invented the shipping container in the 1930s in New Jersey, while sitting at a dock waiting all day for cargo he had carried there in his truck to be reloaded onto a ship. He figured out a better way to pack goods and transport them by sea - which was to secure them in large steel boxes that could be easily loaded onto ships. And in so doing he came up with an idea that changed the face of global trade.

SeaLand, the company that McLean founded, is now Maersk-Sealand, having merged with the Maersk Line in 1999. It’s difficult to drive down any highway, or through any port, anywhere, without seeing a container with Maersk painted on the side.

Quote overheard at Timothy’s at 10:42 a.m. this morning. Speaker was, by appearances, a Holland College policy wonk.

Apparently I have invented a concept: search Google for car free Mondays and, so far, there are no results. Until now!

I woke up this morning with a 9:00 a.m. meeting on my calendar, about a mile away from my house. Usually, I am ashamed to say, attending meetings like this would entail waiting until five minutes before the scheduled time, hopping in my car, and hot tailing it 5 blocks west.

This morning, though, with visions of greenhouse gas emissions dancing in my head, I decided to extract the oft-unused bicycle from the mud room and leave the car at home.

After my meeting, I had a pleasant ride home, with a stop at Timothy’s for some work and an iced mocha cappucino.

After lunch, I got 4 or 5 hours worth of work done, and then realized suddenly that I should rush out to Future Shop to buy a wireless router to feed my neighbours.

Again, usually this would entail about a 4 minute car ride each way, but “Car Free Mondays” now planted firmly in my head, I decided to get the bike out again.

This being a much longer trip than my aging body is used to — and one that entails several minor league hills (some might say “rises”) — I quickly arranged with Steven to make an impromptu visit to the slicedome. This would afford me both the opportunity to tour their empire, but also would provide a convenient excuse to rest my weary body and refuel on water.

The ride out was much easier than I imagined it to be. The “tough bits” — the rise from Shoppers Drug Mart to UPEI, and the hill after the dip on the way up to Staples — weren’t that hard at all. Even the route back up North River Road, although pockmarked with various construction debris, wasn’t all that hard.

Here’s what I learned and gained in today’s experiment:

• I burned about 259 calories; says here that’s about 0.44 Big Macs worth.
• I saved about 1/5 of a gallon of gasoline, saving me about 50 cents.
• I saved the planet from about 1.5 kilograms of greenhouse gases.
• I kept one car out of both early morning and late afternoon Charlottetown traffic, making the ride easier for everyone who didn’t leave the car at home.
• I realized just how much smog there really is in Charlottetown; I challenge anyone to stand at the corner of Allen Street and University Ave. and breath in deeply at 4:00 p.m. on a weekday and not be shocked at the result.
• I discovered that Charlottetown is not a “bike friendly city” in terms of its infrastructure None of the roads I took had a bike lane. The area where bikes are expected to ride, between the sidewalk and traffic, is often full of holes, rocks, and culvert construction.
• That said, I learned that Charlottetown drivers, at least in my experience today, are quite bike tolerant. I was turning left in their turn lanes, make them wait for me, forcing them to slow down, and I never heard a honk of the horn or an unkind word spoken or yelled.
• I saw one other person on a bicycle during my entire journey — a woman riding up around UPEI.

I think I’m going to try and stick to a regime of Car Free Mondays for the summer, and see how it goes.

Care to join me?

The Confederation Centre of the Arts is in the midst of a well-deserved renovation. The Confederation Centre Public Library has been spruced up. Spring has sprung, summer’s here, the trees are out, the landscaping is in full spleandour.

And this is the view from the plaza, sitting on a brand new bench, looking out over Victoria Row:

Couldn’t we muster a couple of hundred extras dollars for some design and construction work so that our garbage doesn’t look like it’s being stored in concrete coffins with poor typography.

Don’t get me started on the “No Skateboards Bikes Rollerblades” thing.

Stringer David Joseph Malahoff was first to spot Interlude a new café on Kent Street advertising “bubble tea.” Oliver and I took a field trip over this evening to take a look, but they were closed. Peering in the window, things look very interesting. Perhaps all the Charlottetown firefighters will become bubble tea addicts now?

In other coffee and tea news: the Formosa Tea House has changed its hours: they’re now open from Noon to 6:00 p.m. (an hour later in both opening and closing). My friend Ann commented that if they extend forward by about another six hours, they’ll hit the sweet spot for my patronage.
Also, renovations to the former Uncommon Grocer space on Queen St. continue, as Cora’s Breakfast and Lunch readies for operation.

Keep eating…

I have become addicted to bluegrass music, and have set my virtual radio dial to BluegrassCountry.org. Go figure.

The Angus TeleManagement Group reports in today’s Telecom Update:

AT&T Canada has announced its new name three months earlier than required by its deal with AT&T Corp. The new name, Allstream Inc, is effective immediately: the company can continue describing itself as “formerly AT&T Canada” until December.

The company has a page on their website explaining the new brand.