The Savvy Boomer

Wonder why @BCFerries have scheduling problems?

Check out this tweet posted by BC Ferries on Monday July 4th.  Maybe July 4th is their Groundhog day.  Hopefully their chief tweeter doesn't get paid as much as their Chief Exec David Hahn. Actually, running a BCFerry into a dock might be a more realistic reason for running behind schedule.

BC Ferries Rant

Since recently moving away from the frenetic pace of Vancouver to the slower pace of Vancouver Island, we have been subjected to the whims and total disregard for service attitude of the Crown owned operation known as B.C. Ferries.  If you want to know more background about the composition of this dinosaur, read Vancouver Sun's Stephen Hume's recent take on the state of affairs of the (dis)organization.

The main complaints about BCF are the condition of many of the vessels, the fact they lose money, the million $ plus the President of BCF is paid, the food, the prices they charge for everything with 3%+ price increases promised every year, and of course the fact that the employees are unionized so once every few years, they go on strike and the only way to get to the islands is by air so forget about bringing the car.

Yesterday's crossing was typical.

Farmed salmon producers protesteth too much

Here's my first rant of the year:

Which of these would you rather eat?

 

 
Salmon is my favourite fish and my go-to healthy dinner.  For those of us lucky enough to live in the Pacific Northwest and B.C. in particular, we regard eating salmon as part of our culture, so much that I will never order salmon in a restaurant outside of the Pacific Northwest because it would be like someone visiting from Texas ordering barbecue in B.C.  Besides that, the salmon may be Atlantic or as they like to call it to disguise what it really is-"farmed" salmon. Most serious restaurants in the Vancouver area will not serve Atlantic salmon and for good reason.  A lot of farmed salmon is served on sushi, so be sure to always ask first. 

That Atlantic label is deceiving.  I once saw someone about to buy fresh Atlantic salmon in Costco and I said "You realize that's farmed don't you?" They replied that it was cheaper than the other salmon labelled "Pacific wild" and weren't willing to pay extra just because it was caught in the Pacific versus the Atlantic Ocean.  After I set them straight, they bought the real salmon.

There is no way in the world I will ever eat farmed salmon again-I've tried it twice and all I can say is "YECHH!"  I'm not going to go into all the reasons why, but the main ones are how the salmon are raised, what they are fed and their effect on "real" wild salmon.  Most people from B.C. feel the same so the salmon farmers have decided to run a series of strong radio, TV, print and web ads which basically say that anything anyone says negative about farmed salmon is a myth and that those people are pig-headed and ignorant.

Really?  OK even if I were to believe all their propaganda there is one point they never address and that is taste and appearance.  To me, Atlantic (farmed) salmon tastes like salmon flavoured jelly and looks like it was mixed with some other kind of food to make the meat look like a white striped pale orange.  Compare that to the red, robust, perfect taste of a wild sockeye-even one that has been sitting in the freezer for a few months and you'll see what I mean.

The good news for serious salmon lovers like myself is that people who don't know or care about the difference, buy the farmed and leave more of the wild for us.

There are lots of web sites out there that will give you their self interest side of the story (I have no interest in either, other than health, nutrition and taste) but this CTV article gives you an unbiased view.  And every time I see the ad come on comparing how people who think farmed salmon are bad to a drunken teenager blaming the cat for wrecking the house when his parents return home, I become even firmer in my resolve against farmed salmon.  It caused me to write this post and others as well.

 

British Columbia's criminal penalties are a joke

A woman is convicted of dangerous and impaired driving for killing this little girl and she gets 2 1/2 years in jail.  Despicable!!  And her lawyer is going to appeal!  Read the story and weep.

Alexa Middelaer 2003-2008

Vancouver Olympics manage to piss off several thousand, probably a few million

You'd think that the VANOC folks would expect a few hundred thousand hits on their servers when they put the final 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics tickets on sale this morning.  They failed, finally cancelling the sales for a week because of technical problems.  This Olympics has a budget of a few billion and they can't get something simple like online ticket sales right?  In the typical cavalier manner they have adopted to run these games, they didn't really even apologize for THE 4 HOURS I WASTED TRYING TO GET INTO THE WEBSITE.  Perhaps they knew I am leaving during the games because Vancouver is going to turn into a parking lot for 2 weeks and I really just wanted to scalp them like most everyone else who lives in Vancouver.

The sordid evidence of what the Vancouver Sun called the EPIC FAIL:

 

  

I thought I was getting somewhere here but the 1995 type web page below didn't give me much confidence.

  

  

The message below was a real piss off because it was up for a few hours and if you clicked on it, the page just re-loaded

 

This was the BS they posted on Twitter-nice apology

 

British Columbia finally bans cellphones when driving

I was driving out of a parking garage tonight when a car coming in oblivious to the fact that there was an in and out divider, came in on the out route.  You guessed it, the female driver was yakking away on a cell phone.   After a middle finger salute, I gave her a few more choice words but since she was the mother of one of my ESL students, I doubt she understood what I said.

A few minutes later, I was following another moron driving 1/2 the posted limit. Yup, texting on his cell phone.  Middle finger, horn and a few more choice words that rhyme with f+_(%^ing azzhole.

So when I got home and watched the news, I was overjoyed to see that B.C. has finally entered the 21st century and decided to ban cell phone usage when driving.

Sure, it will be difficult to enforce but I can't wait to take a picture of someone using a cellphone while driving.  Oh wait a minute, that too may be illegal.  Ahh, it'll be worth the expression on their face trying to cover up their criminal activity when they see my cell phone camera.

It's about time this provincial government that I'm ashamed to admit I voted for finally got something right.

Driving in BC can be (is) dangerous

If you drive in BC you know it can be dangerous but if you come from another province or state, you need to know the kind of bullshit drivers that can exist here.  Some immigrants seem to think that money will solve their inabilities to drive while others think they are invincible no matter how much they imbibe.

A Vancouver area winery with an outstanding restaurant

Although I am a big supporter of British Columbia, I have never really been on board with the BC wine industry.  The reason is simple; BC wines, while reasonably good are also reasonably expensive.  I find much better values in our local liquor stores in wines imported from France, Argentina, Chile, Australia and the USA in particular.   I like a lot of BC wines I have tasted but refuse to pay $20-$30 a bottle when I can buy as good or better tasting imported wine for $12-$20 a bottle. 

However, I do enjoy the restaurants found in some B.C. wineries.  If you are in the Okanagan, be sure to try the restaurants at Lake Breeze, Burrowing Owl and Gray Monk.  If you are in the Vancouver area, there is a restaurant in the Langley winery called Domaine de Chaberton.

We recently enjoyed a lunch there that rivalled any top quality restaurant I have eaten in for some time.  We started with mussels in a sauce that had us wondering if we had ever had any mussels this scrumptious before.  Superb does not adequately define them.  Our main courses of a curry roast lamb and a roasted double rack pork chop were not only outstanding, but were so large in quantity that we took home the dreaded doggy bags and had more than enough for dinner that night.  I can't even imagine how large the dinner portions must be.  A word of warning is that every entree seems to be served in the French style of a lot of rich sauce (guess that's because the winery has a French name) and while they taste wonderful, if you aren't a sauce person, you need to ask if they can cut it back.

Of course we also had a couple glasses of their wine which was very good but I'm sticking to my guns about BC wines being over priced.  I guess I didn't mind too much though since the food was great.  Our server, Beverly, was very professional and attentive and while the restaurant ambience is wannabe outdoorsy French, it doesn't quite succeed but is certainly adequate-and did I mention-the food was incredible and given the quantity, the prices are quite reasonable.

OK OK, I'm not much of a food critic writer, but this restaurant gets a 9 out of 10 from us and if they ever understand that their wine is overpriced by about 30% compared to their foreign competitors, they will get a 10.