Here is my favourite discovery of our trip to Barcelona, found by chance near Playa Catalunya one night walking to the subway after eating a very, very good meal of Mexican food at a restaurant called Mexi-Cal.

It’s the Oliver Detective Agency.

On the road west from the ocean into the hills of the Costa Brava. European road signage is so wonderful.

A billboard in Bilbao, off Calle Ercilla:

On a streetcorner near La Sagranda in Barcelona, the street-level retail spaces have been filled with a McDonalds, a Starbucks and a pizza chain. The tenants above obviously disapprove of the change.

I’ve had difficulty find a translation for the protest banners, which I presume are in Catalan. Any Catalan-speakers in the audience?

My parents and my brother Mike live approximately 20 minutes from each other, in and around the city of Burlington, Ontario. I asked my mother yesterday if she ever ran into Mike at the grocery store or the like, and she said she doesn’t. Such is life in the densely packed Golden Horseshoe.

This made me recall the time I was in Canadian Tire here in Charlottetown, and I ended up in the line in front of Pat Mella, at the time the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly. It felt like being in line in front of Sting, or Nelson Mandela (well, okay, maybe not that weird, but still pretty weird).

It has taken me a decade to come to terms with the Island’s compressed personality-o-sphere, where public school teachers become Lieutenant Governor and the guy fixing your car might be Minister of Environment come the next election.

Monday afternoon I was trying to get back in the work groove, and went out to get a frozen yoghurt at Just Juicin’ mid-afternoon to procrastinate. Who should I run into on the way home but Minister of Development and Technology Mike Currie, the man who is ultimately responsible for half of my weekly pay cheque. Fortunately he didn’t recognize me, and I was able to eat my yoghurt in anonimity.

As if by magic, who should walk by Timothy’s (the coffee shop on Kent St. where I type this note) but Premier Pat Binns and his staff. I should run out and ask for his autograph. But I’ll probably see him at Canadian Tire this weekend.

After years of running moribund television commercials advertising their “Day Adventures” (aka “we know you’re not actually going to want to spend the night here, but would you at least spend a little time before you drive to PEI?”), Tourism New Brunswick has produced some very compelling television commercials. They make we want to actually visit the Province. No, no this can’t be happening…

We present here the first in a series of Reinvented Virtual Courses®. Today’s topic: “Important Vocabulary Distinctions for French-Speaking Cabinet Ministers Discussing New Drug Legislation”.

Persecution - The act or practice of persecuting; especially, the infliction of loss, pain, or death for adherence to a particular creed or mode of worship. (From Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913)

Prosecution - The institution and carrying on of a suit in a court of law or equity, to obtain some right, or to redress and punish some wrong; the carrying on of a judicial proceeding in behalf of a complaining party, as distinguished from defense. (From Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913)

Used in a sentence: “The members of the sect were persecuted by their neighbours for their belief in a higher life force controlled by a racoon overlord.” vs. “The teen ruffians were prosecuted by the police for burning down the local elementary school.”

This concludes this course. For more e-learning opportunities, be sure to visit TownSquare.ca.

I just stumbled across this telephone number — 1-700-555-4141 — tonight on the CRTC website. You phone it, and a recording tells you which telephone company is providing you with long distance service. Interestingly enough, the Aliant brandocrats haven’t extended their reach this far in the Aliantification of Island Tel: call the number above from PEI (assuming you haven’t jumped to another long distance provider) and you’ll still hear “Your provider of long distance service is Island Tel. Thank you for choosing us.”

Our cellular providers here don’t make it easy to find out what phones they sell. I don’t know why this is; somehow they seem to think that the handset is a necessary evil, perhaps? In any case, here’s a list, based on research today, of the handsets each of the three providers has in their current stable. I’ve included GSM phones for Rogers, and PCS/CDMA phones for Telus and Aliant.

• Aliant
  • Motorola V120c
  • Audiovox CDM 8200
  • Kyocera 5135
  • Samsung SCH-N370
  • Audiovox CDM 8500
  • Motorola V. Series? 60ci
  • Samsung SPH-A460
  • Kyocera Smartphone QCP? 6035
• Rogers AT&T
  • Sony Ericsson T306
  • Panasonic GD88
  • Motorola T720
  • Nokia 3595
  • Siemens C56
  • Motorola C333
  • Nokia 3590
  • Siemens M46
  • Motorola C332
  • Nokia 6310i
  • Motorola V66
  • Motorola V101
  • Nokia 8390
  • Motorola Timeport 7382i
  • Sony Ericsson T68i
  • Motorola V60
  • Motorola V70
  • Palm? Tungsten? W
  • Motorola 280
  • Motorola T193
  • Handspring Treo 270
• Telus Mobility
  • Samsung SCH-A220
  • Samsung SPH-A520
  • Sony Ericsson T206
  • Samsung SPH-A540
  • Audiovox CDM 8300
  • Audiovox CDM 8150
  • Motorola v120x
  • Motorola v60ci
  • LG TM-520

Obviously Rogers has the greatest variety of phones. Aliant seems to, inexplicably, have phones that seem like they come from the bottom of the “hot and sexy” barrel. Telus comes up the middle. Only Rogers offers a Bluetooth-enabled phone (the t68i). None of the providers offers any information about how to source phones elsewhere and have them enabled on their network.

Readers who were around in the 1970s will recall that David Moses and I were the protagonists in a company called Okeedokee. While Okeedokee is still alive and kicking, and runs the Vacancy Information Service for the Island, we have no employees, no other clients, and no office. We are, in the truest sense of the word, a “virtual” company.

And yet, somehow, we ended up on a list at Statistics Canada of “high tech firms we should send a lot of surveys.” And these are not simple surveys — they are detailed beasts about ROIs and employee ratios and technical infrastructure. They are, in sum, not something we have the time or staff to complete, nor are they particularly relevant to our operation.

So we generally ignore them.

But Statistics Canada does not give up without a fight. If you don’t reply, they phone you. And phone you back.

Historically the person who has phoned us to follow up has been parole officer like, and has gone on at some length about our statutory responsibilities, and the importance of contributing to the Greater Good with our information. We have always gotten the impression that they sit beside a red button that, if pushed, will immediately dispatch the RCMP Statistical Noncompliance Squad to our virtual offices.

Today was different though. A very nice woman from StatsCan phoned, and after some complicated dancing about whether she had called Okeedokee or Reinvented, I explained the situation at Okeedokee, and, oddly, she understood completely that it was absurd for us to continue to receive these surveys, and promised to take us off the list.

Before we rung off, she asked for my name. And when I gave it to her she said, “oh, I’ve read your website.”

I’m not sure whether to be overjoyed or deathly afraid.